Opening
A pastel-perfect first birthday for Violet Connor offers Blythe Connor and Fox Connor a fleeting glimpse of the family they want to be. In the days and years that follow, sleepless nights, private terror, and public denial pull that picture apart—until a memory of tiles and a missing son reframes everything.
What Happens
Chapter 21: A Perfect Picture
The party gleams with curated joy: soft balloons, fancy paper plates, Violet’s jumper from her grandmother, and Fox shadowing his daughter with a camera. When Blythe brings out the cake, Violet says “Happy!”—a tiny word that makes the whole room glow.
Blythe settles onto Fox’s lap. “We did it,” he whispers, and for a heartbeat they believe it. They pose for a photo—Blythe, a calm Violet, and Fox—an image Blythe calls “exactly as we were supposed to be,” a snapshot of the life they keep trying to will into existence.
That picture, though, sits on top of a year of struggle. The stillness of the photo contrasts with the turbulence beneath it, hinting at how fragile their peace is.
Chapter 22: The Unraveling
The calm collapses. Violet stops sleeping through the night, and Blythe’s body anticipates the crying—she wakes moments before it starts. Ravaged by exhaustion, she slips bottles of milk into the crib to buy minutes of quiet. Fox calls it dangerous; he also calls it a phase.
Blythe asks for daycare. Fox resists, invoking his mother’s example. Blythe pretends to wrestle with the choice, performing “good mother” for his benefit while her mind frays. Alone together, Violet’s hostility intensifies: she recoils from Blythe’s touch and bangs her head against the wall. Fear replaces hope.
Back at her desk with headphones on, Blythe secretly returns to ignoring Violet in order to write. She hates herself for it and does it anyway. After one brutal day, Fox relents—three days a week of daycare. The first drop-off floods Blythe with relief so intense it feels like air after drowning.
Chapter 23: The Bite
Helen, Fox’s mother, arrives to watch Violet. She brings a baby doll. Violet cradles it sweetly, and Helen declares it “maternal instinct.” Helen praises Fox as a perfect father, and Blythe absorbs the sting of being seen—and dismissed—by a woman who makes motherhood look effortless.
Bath time detonates. Violet erupts, and when Blythe leans in, Violet clamps down on her cheek with shocking force. Helen rushes in, pries Violet’s jaw open, and soothes her with ease. Humiliation and dread flood Blythe: it looks like she is the problem.
Later, Helen offers bland comfort—you get through it—and tells Fox that Violet has “a bit of a temper.” The minimization creates a quiet pact with Blythe that also conceals the violence from Fox, leaving Blythe more isolated than before.
Chapter 24: Looking for Him in Those Tiles
The narrative pauses to consider memory. Blythe’s mind doesn’t hold onto much before she is eight. Without photos or family lore, she carries a single version of the truth. A stroller recollection is all sensory fragments: sour formula, cigarette smoke, a blur of movement.
Then her focus turns to her son, Sam Connor. What would he remember from his brief life? Not milestones—colors. In the community pool change room, the mustard, emerald, and sailor-blue tiles calm him every week. “I go back to that change room often. Looking for him in those tiles.” The line suggests loss that eclipses everything else.
Chapter 25: The Ledge
At three, Violet charms the world: Christmas tights in July, scrambled eggs called “yellow clouds,” a florist who adores her. The dark moments taper, and Blythe inches back toward hope. She imagines herself dangling, finding “just enough space to hang from,” believing she can pull herself onto the ledge.
After a rare weekend away, Blythe aches to see Violet. Late at night, she creeps to the crib for a private reunion. Violet wakes, sees her mother—and her face falls. Fox steps in moments later, and Violet’s joy switches on. She showers him with kisses, the affection Blythe craves redirected without hesitation.
When Blythe admits how much it hurts, Fox dismisses her. “It’s all in your head. There’s nothing wrong with her.” The denial hardens into a pattern: Blythe’s reality shrinks while the picture-perfect family remains intact for everyone else to admire.
Character Development
Blythe fights to mother a child who seems to reject her, ricocheting between moments of clarity and behaviors she fears in herself. Violet grows into a split self—publicly angelic, privately punitive. Fox guards the image more than the truth, while Helen enforces a standard Blythe can’t meet. Sam enters as absence, and that absence reshapes every scene.
- Blythe Connor: Exhaustion tips into self-doubt and secrecy; her relief at daycare exposes how close to the edge she is; the “ledge” metaphor articulates her fragile hope.
- Violet Connor: Alternates sweetness with targeted hostility; the bite makes latent aggression undeniable; her selective affection appears purposeful.
- Fox Connor: Minimizes Blythe’s experiences; privileges appearances and lineage (“my mother did it”); chooses denial over investigation.
- Helen: Offers soothing platitudes and strategic minimization; models traditional motherhood that invalidates Blythe’s distress.
- Sam Connor: Introduced through memory and color; his absence foreshadows a central trauma that reframes Blythe’s narration.
Themes & Symbols
Perception, Reality, and Gaslighting defines these chapters. Fox’s refrains—It’s a phase; It’s in your head—strip Blythe’s observations of legitimacy. Helen’s downplaying of the bite further seals Blythe in a private reality no one else will acknowledge, making her question her sanity even as the evidence mounts.
The Dark Side of Motherhood surfaces in Blythe’s resentment, fear, and secret coping strategies. The narrative refuses the sanitized script of mother-love, attending instead to shame, exhaustion, and the terror of not being believed by the person who should be your witness.
Marital Breakdown and Betrayal deepens as Fox aligns with the family image over Blythe’s truth, while Nature vs. Nurture and Generational Trauma lingers in questions about Violet’s behavior: is it innate, learned, or a legacy of the mothers before her? The doll becomes a symbol of performed care—Violet can “mother” a toy but withholds tenderness from the actual mother.
Key Quotes
“We did it.” Fox’s whisper crowns the birthday tableau, a declaration that confuses survival with success. The line becomes tragic irony as the family’s facade collapses in the next chapter.
“I go back to that change room often. Looking for him in those tiles.” Color replaces chronology in Blythe’s memory of Sam, turning a public space into a shrine. The sentence signals a grief that retroactively colors every earlier scene.
“It’s all in your head. There’s nothing wrong with her.” Fox’s denial crystallizes the gaslighting that isolates Blythe. The line shifts the conflict from child behavior to epistemology—whose account of reality counts.
“I couldn’t tell you the truth: that I believed there was something wrong with our daughter. You thought the problem was me.” Blythe’s direct address indicts Fox and exposes the trap: if she speaks, she’s hysterical; if she stays silent, she’s complicit. The tension drives her toward secrecy and self-doubt.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters dismantle the hopeful image captured at Violet’s birthday and replace it with a harsher picture: a mother on a ledge, a child who splits her affection, and a partner who prefers the pose to the truth. The bite marks the first undeniable wound; the tiles introduce Sam and the haunting absence that will define the book’s emotional stakes.
By threading memory, denial, and performance, the section connects private pain to public image. It prepares the ground for the novel’s central question—what is happening to this family, and who will be believed when the worst happens?