Opening
Marriages crack, secrets surface, and the Sorenson family weathers a year that remakes them. Liza Sorenson loses her husband and gains an unexpected ally; Wendy Sorenson exposes the fierce love beneath her armor; and the old ideal of David Sorenson and Marilyn Sorenson’s perfect marriage gives way to something messier—and truer.
What Happens
Chapter 16: The Escape Hatch
In 2016, Liza comes home to find her husband, Ryan, packing. He confronts her about an affair; she confesses and, when he demands to know if the baby is his, tells him yes—the affair starts after she is already pregnant. Humiliated but steady, he says he’s leaving for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to work with a friend, calling separation the “least harmful” choice. He hugs her once, the baby between them, and drives away.
Liza reels—furious, guilty, and, to her horror, relieved. Ryan’s departure feels like the “escape hatch” she’s secretly wanted from the heaviness of his depression, yet the prospect of raising a child alone crushes her. She grieves the family ideal she grew up with and believes her child will never know, and she ends the night “expansively, islandically alone.”
A 1995 flashback follows the aftermath of Wendy’s overdose. At the Sorensons’ house, Wendy’s boyfriend Aaron brings flowers and tells teenage Violet Sorenson-Lowell that Wendy always says Violet is brilliant—an unexpected window into sisterly devotion. At the hospital, David and Marilyn, frayed by fear, explode into a cafeteria fight about doctors, blame, and burnout, exposing cracks in their marriage and complicating The Ideal vs. Reality of Love and Marriage. They end in a wary truce, admitting fear is making them cruel.
Chapter 17: Ivy Marilyn Eisenberg
In the present, Wendy invites Marilyn to her immaculate high-rise for lunch. Years of resentment hum beneath every exchange: Wendy believes Marilyn favors her more conventionally successful daughters; Marilyn insists she sees Wendy as the strongest of the four. Their sparring turns tender when Marilyn admits that motherhood can be “a parade of complete and utter agony,” and even asks Wendy for a cigarette—an imperfect truce sealed in shared vulnerability.
The breakthrough arrives by accident. Searching for Advil, Marilyn finds a file labeled “Ivy” in Wendy’s office and discovers the death certificate for Wendy’s stillborn daughter: Ivy Marilyn Eisenberg. The middle name floors her. Wendy has honored her with the name she never knew, dissolving years of perceived contempt. They embrace, and Marilyn tells Wendy what a “remarkable woman” she’s become.
In a 1996 flashback, David begins a pattern of dinners with colleague Gillian Levin—an escape from chaos at home. He advises her to find someone “nuts about you,” revealing more about his devotion to Marilyn than he means to. The ritual inches toward an emotional affair, setting up the cost of Secrets and Their Consequences.
Chapter 18: Biological Cowards
Liza shows up at Wendy’s apartment and blurts, “Ryan left me.” Wendy softens, deploying gallows humor and sharing a story about a brutal fight with her late husband, Miles Eisenberg, when she was pregnant. Liza admits she’s terrified of single motherhood; Wendy promises she won’t be alone—the Sorensons will swarm. Their bond deepens, complicating neat labels and enlarging The Complexity of Family and Sisterhood.
Meanwhile, Grace Sorenson keeps up her elaborate lie in Philadelphia that she’s in law school. When Marilyn calls about Christmas plans, Grace invents a ski trip “to the Alps” with imaginary friends to avoid coming home. She misses her family even as she thrills at her independence and a flirtation with her coworker, Ben.
Back in 1996, after another dinner, Gillian places a hand on David’s thigh in the car. He pulls back—he’s married and “not that man”—though he admits the connection feels real. She gives him a dry kiss and leaves. At home, Marilyn confronts him; she’s discovered his six weeks of lies. He confesses to the dinners, and their worst-ever fight detonates. Marilyn doesn’t accuse him of cheating; she rages at the emotional betrayal. He calls her a “fucking martyr.” She sends him to the guest room. Upstairs, a young Liza overhears everything, including her mother’s sobs—an imprint that will shape her idea of marriage.
Chapter 19: A Worthless Liar
In the present, Liza tells her parents about Ryan. David bristles, calling Ryan a “bastard.” Marilyn goes straight to comfort, tucking Liza into bed in Violet’s old room. The Sorenson house becomes sanctuary. Across town, Violet practices guitar with her son Wyatt. When he asks if Jonah Bendt can come to his kindergarten concert, Violet freezes. The simple question threatens the fragile wall between her past and present.
The 1996 timeline continues. Marilyn confronts Gillian at the office; Gillian stays professional and denies an affair, calling David a good man who knows his limits. Ashamed, Marilyn asks her to keep away. Later, Marilyn visits David’s ailing father, Richard, who reveals Wendy has been visiting him secretly. He reminds Marilyn that David is flawed but good—and that if she’s unhappy, she must speak.
Marilyn then strategizes with Wendy about post–high school options. Wendy disparages college, citing Marilyn’s own dropout past. Patiently, Marilyn proposes a deal: take a year off, apply for college next year, and babysit Grace to earn money. With no better plan, Wendy agrees, a small pivot toward maturity and peace.
Chapter 20: Evel Knievel
While housesitting for her parents, a nauseated Liza makes a reckless call: she lets fifteen-year-old, unlicensed Jonah take her car to his martial arts class. Elsewhere, Marilyn and David enjoy a romantic weekend, reflecting on forty years of love and the art of stepping back from their adult children’s lives—until a cascade of calls shatters the calm. Jonah, swerving to avoid another car, hits a mailbox and ends up at the police station.
Liza rushes there to find him terrified. Instead of scolding, she wraps him in reassurance and warmth. The crisis forges a new, surprising intimacy between them.
In 1997, Richard dies. Grief dissolves the year-long cold war between Marilyn and David; at the wake they squeeze hands, then kiss, connection restored. David watches Wendy comfort Grace and gently explain “forever,” a tenderness that startles him. Later, Wendy asks to be a pallbearer—a role traditionally given to men. David, moved, says yes. Loss, paradoxically, stitches the family back together.
Character Development
The family’s surface myths—about perfect marriages, problem daughters, and dependable roles—fall away as each character chooses either confession or concealment, retreat or care.
- Liza: Shifts from feeling trapped in a faltering marriage to confronting independence head-on. Her response to Jonah’s crash reveals steadiness and maternal grace under pressure.
- Wendy: Reframes as the family’s quiet pillar—ferocious, funny, and deeply loyal. Ivy’s middle name and her promise to Liza expose the love beneath the bravado.
- Marilyn: Moves from brittle control to vulnerable honesty. Ivy’s file heals an old wound; she fights for her marriage and practices patient, strategic mothering with Wendy.
- David: The “perfect husband” façade collapses; he faces the cost of emotional infidelity. Grief returns him to humility and devotion.
- Violet: Maintains a carefully curated present while her past presses in; Wyatt’s simple request about Jonah spikes her anxiety.
- Grace: Doubles down on deception to keep her new life intact, even as homesickness tugs.
- Jonah: Acts as both chaos agent and connective tissue; his mistake catalyzes a deeper bond with Liza and a slow integration into the fold.
Themes & Symbols
The ideal versus reality of love and marriage surfaces in both timelines: David and Marilyn’s cafeteria blowup and year-long freeze puncture the family’s myth of perfection, even as their reunion shows what endurance actually looks like. Liza’s imploding marriage mirrors that arc in miniature—an idealized future giving way to a workable, loving present built on community rather than couplehood.
Secrets power the plot and expose inner lives. Some corrode (Liza’s affair, David’s dinners, Grace’s law-school lie); others reveal love that words fail to carry (Ivy’s middle name, Wendy’s quiet visits to Richard). Sisterhood proves both abrasive and redemptive: Wendy and Liza’s new alliance, Violet and Wendy’s old rivalries softened by Aaron’s comment, and the Sorenson response to crisis all underscore how this family’s intensity can hurt—and heal.
Key Quotes
“Least harmful.”
- Ryan’s clinical framing of his departure reduces marriage to damage control, exposing the pragmatic, unsentimental choices the novel’s couples sometimes make. It also mirrors David and Marilyn’s eventual recognition that survival, not symmetry, defines long partnerships.
“Expansively, islandically alone.”
- Liza’s solitude widens into a landscape, capturing the dizzying mix of relief and terror that follows Ryan’s exit. The image reframes “alone” as both terrifying and clearing—space in which new bonds can form.
“A parade of complete and utter agony.”
- Marilyn’s confession cracks her maternal mystique and invites intimacy with Wendy. Naming motherhood’s pain allows mother and daughter to meet as equals—two women surviving what love demands.
“I’m not that man.”
- David’s insistence during his near-miss with Gillian underscores the line he wants to draw between emotional and physical betrayal. The novel questions whether that line matters to the people who are hurt.
“Fucking martyr.”
- David’s ugliest accusation exposes the resentment simmering beneath domestic competence and devotion. The slur becomes the low watermark against which their later reconciliation reads as earned, not easy.
“Remarkable woman.”
- Marilyn’s praise of Wendy, sparked by the Ivy file, crystallizes a decade-spanning misunderstanding into mutual recognition. One private name becomes the hinge of their reconciliation.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters dismantle the Sorenson family’s central myth: that David and Marilyn’s love is effortless and exemplary. By tracing the near-implosion of their marriage in 1996–97 alongside Liza’s 2016 rupture, the novel explains the daughters’ anxieties about love and the scripts they follow or defy. The Ivy revelation transforms Wendy and Marilyn’s dynamic; the Jonah crash binds Liza and Jonah in trust; and Richard’s death catalyzes a durable, unsentimental version of marriage for David and Marilyn.
Together, these moments reorient the present-day story lines. Liza must reinvent family without Ryan. Violet can no longer keep her past hermetically sealed from her present. Secrets fracture and bind in equal measure, proving that the Sorensons endure not because they are ideal, but because, in crisis, they choose each other.