Opening
In these chapters, Blythe Connor addresses Fox Connor while imagining the glossy birth of his and Gemma’s son, then retreats into a private ritual that resurrects her grief for Sam Connor. A childhood flashback exposes her mother’s rejection, and in the present she infiltrates Gemma’s life, manipulates her judgment, and builds a false, living version of her dead child—splitting reality from performance. Meanwhile, Violet Connor drifts further from her, aligning with Fox’s “new” family.
What Happens
Chapter 66: The Ritual
Blythe speaks directly to Fox as she pictures Gemma’s labor in tactile detail—his hand in hers, the glow of a room where everything goes right, the awe at their newborn son. The fantasy curdles into accusation: Did he ever love Blythe like that? The imagined scene leaves her wide awake, aching for what she lost and what he has replaced.
She retrieves a storage box of Sam’s unwashed clothes from the basement, turns on white noise, smooths the lavender lotion she used on his skin, and breathes in the fading scent of onesies, blankets, and Benny the Bunny. Each inhalation sparks “little silent movies” of Sam alive in their home. When the scent thins—especially on Benny—she arranges his pajama top, an unused diaper, and the stuffed bunny on her bed to approximate his body. She cradles the bundle, hums, and sleeps with “him” in her arms.
Morning returns her to the world she lives in alone. She carefully folds everything away. The ritual is cyclical and secret, her only reliable way to feel alive with Sam again even as the boundary between memory and delusion blurs.
Chapter 67: A Ploy to Get Her Home
A childhood flashback: Blythe’s father surprises her with lunch plans with her mother, Cecilia, whom Blythe hasn’t seen in two years. The new apartment gleams with expensive emptiness. Cecilia is burnished and perfumed, a stranger in a staged life. Richard, her partner, hovers in the margins like a prop.
Blythe overhears the truth: Richard phoned her father to arrange this meeting, using Blythe as bait to coax Cecilia back from the city. The visit isn’t a reunion; it’s leverage. As they leave, Blythe waits for words that don’t come—no I’ve missed you, no Come back soon. In the car, her father says nothing. Later, Blythe tells him, “It wasn’t you who made her unhappy.” He doesn’t answer. She never sees her mother again.
Chapter 68: Our Little Family
Back in the present, Violet drifts through Blythe’s house like a ghost, her quiet contempt a weather system. As a “child of divorce,” she seems newly empowered. One morning, Violet wears a delicate gold necklace—Gemma’s gift—evidence of the home where Blythe doesn’t belong.
Blythe cultivates a false identity, “Anne,” to befriend Gemma at the weekly mothers’ group. She studies Gemma’s gestures and words, collecting scraps of Fox’s new life. When Gemma finally mentions her stepdaughter, she calls Violet a “sweetheart” and gushes about their “little family.” She repeats Fox’s line: Violet’s mother has “issues” and is “not really in the picture.” Gemma describes Violet as the best big sister to baby Jet, her voice untroubled by the unease Blythe remembers all too well.
Chapter 69: You’ll Never Forgive Yourself
Blythe buys a new phone to text Gemma. Their nightly messages grow intimate; Gemma leans on “Anne” for mothering advice. When Jet develops a chest cold and Fox is out of town, Gemma panics about whether to go to the ER. Taking him means waking eleven-year-old Violet, who has early basketball practice.
Blythe exploits the moment. She urges Gemma to leave Violet asleep and take Jet in—“You’ll never forgive yourself” if he worsens. The advice is a calculated strike meant to make Fox furious, to fracture the easy harmony Blythe can’t stop imagining.
It works—partly. Fox “freaks out” when he learns Violet was left alone. At the next group, Gemma is quiet, her trust bruised. Blythe realizes she’s damaged the one connection she needs most and feels the acid of guilt alongside the adrenaline of revenge.
Chapter 70: Sam’s Second Chance
Blythe’s friendship with Gemma becomes a sanctuary for an impossible act: she resurrects Sam. In chatty, everyday details, she builds a living four-year-old—his preschool friends, his favorite snacks, the way he mispronounces words. The pretend becomes addictive and sacred; Gemma’s questions make Sam feel real again.
Then Gemma asks for a photo. Blythe lies—she “cleared her phone.” That night, she hunts online until she finds Siobhan McAdams’s son, James, whose dark curls and gap-toothed grin mirror Sam’s. She saves a dozen photos and sets one as her background.
The fabrication deepens. Blythe buys secondhand gear and passes it off as Sam’s hand-me-downs. In return, Gemma gifts her a set of pricey building blocks, “her husband’s” idea—proof she kept “Anne” out of the ER story. Blythe recognizes the danger: the lies, the intimacy, the proximity to Fox. She resolves to pull back, even as the fantasy tethers her more tightly.
Character Development
Blythe’s grief and need spiral into active manipulation, revealing a character who is both wounded and weaponized. Around her, each relationship hardens into a mirror that reflects what she craves and what she fears.
- Blythe Connor: Clings to Sam through ritual; engineers Gemma’s mistake; fabricates a living Sam to feel like his mother again; oscillates between tenderness and calculated harm.
- Fox Connor: Appears through Blythe’s direct address and Gemma’s reports as a partner who curates narratives and polices boundaries in his “new” family.
- Gemma: Warm, eager, and vulnerable; adopts Fox’s story about Blythe; trusts “Anne” until the ER incident strains the bond; protective of her family’s image.
- Cecilia: Performs motherhood as spectacle and abandons substance; the flashback cements her as the origin point for Blythe’s template of maternal absence.
- Violet Connor: Elusive, aligned with Fox and Gemma; her acceptance of Gemma’s gift signals a shift in loyalties that isolates Blythe further.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters distill the ache and isolation of The Dark Side of Motherhood. Blythe’s night ritual with Sam’s unwashed things becomes a private liturgy that keeps grief present and numinous. It comforts her while eroding her grasp on the boundary between memory and make-believe.
The flashback to Cecilia sharpens Nature vs. Nurture and Generational Trauma: Blythe learns she was a ploy, not a daughter to be reclaimed. That single realization ripples forward, shaping Blythe’s belief that love is performed, withdrawn, and weaponized. In the present, Fox’s curated story—relayed by Gemma—embodies Perception, Reality, and Gaslighting: Blythe is labeled unstable and erased from the picture, while she crafts a counter-narrative in which she’s an attentive mother to a living Sam. Her goad to Gemma at the ER is a tactical shot in the war of Marital Breakdown and Betrayal, meant to crack the polish of Fox’s new life.
Symbols
- Sam’s belongings and Benny the Bunny: Tangible anchors to love and loss; the fading scent marks time’s theft and Blythe’s terror of forgetting.
- The white noise and lavender: Sensory portals that summon the past, soothing Blythe while deepening her dependence on ritual.
- The gold necklace on Violet: A small, gleaming sign of her allegiance to Gemma and Fox’s household, and Blythe’s exclusion from it.
- The stolen photos of “Sam”: Proof of how far Blythe goes to sustain the fantasy—images that make the lie visible and therefore more dangerous.
- Secondhand “hand-me-downs”: Props that let Blythe participate in Gemma’s domestic stage while rewriting her own role within it.
Key Quotes
“little silent movies”
These words capture how sensory memory becomes cinema in Blythe’s mind. She isn’t just remembering; she is screening a life she can still enter, proof of how grief manipulates time and perception.
“You’ll never forgive yourself.”
Blythe weaponizes a truism of motherhood—relentless self-blame—to push Gemma into a risky choice. The line exposes Blythe’s intimate knowledge of maternal fear and her willingness to exploit it.
“our little family.”
Gemma’s phrase radiates warmth while quietly excluding Blythe. It crystallizes the new unit’s cohesion and the story they’re telling themselves about who belongs.
“not really in the picture.”
This casual dismissal recasts Blythe as an absence rather than a mother. It’s a neat piece of gaslighting that simplifies a complicated history into a convenient omission.
“It wasn’t you who made her unhappy.”
Blythe attempts to absolve her father, but the silence that follows underscores the damage Cecilia leaves behind. The line marks Blythe’s early apprenticeship in managing other people’s pain.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence pivots Blythe from haunted observer to active saboteur. By steering Gemma’s ER decision and fabricating a living Sam, she secures proximity to Fox’s new family while endangering them—and herself. The childhood flashback supplies the blueprint: love as performance, intimacy as leverage, abandonment as inevitability. Together, these chapters intensify the novel’s central tension—whether Blythe is a victim, a perpetrator, or both—and set the stage for the fallout when truth and invention collide.