Opening
In chapters 6–10, grief tears open the Whitson family’s carefully maintained distance. Meredith Whitson clings to control as her marriage to Jeff Cooper falters, while Nina Whitson returns home, determined to keep her promise to their father and force their mother, Anya Whitson (Vera Petrovna Marchenko), to finish her “fairy tale.” The family’s private rituals of silence collide with raw Love, Loss, and Grief, pushing them toward the buried truth the winter garden has always kept.
What Happens
Chapter 6: The Candle at Both Ends
After the funeral, Meredith locks herself into a punishing routine—running the orchard, micromanaging her daughters from afar, and managing Anya—believing motion is the only way to survive. Jeff keeps asking her to talk; she refuses, convinced that control is safety. Meanwhile, Anya drifts: Meredith finds her in the dining room with jewelry spread out, muttering in Russian about selling it and a “butterfly,” fixated on running out of money.
Anya’s behavior escalates. She stands barefoot in the snowy winter garden, calls Meredith “Olga,” and stashes hot pierogies in her coat for “Anya.” Terrified, Meredith drags her to Dr. Burns. In the exam room, Anya turns crisp and lucid, dismissing every concern. Alone, Meredith spills everything—hoarding food, confusing fairy tale and reality, talking to herself—and fears Alzheimer’s. Dr. Burns chalks it up to profound grief and tells Meredith to listen, be patient, and not leave Anya alone. Meredith walks out unheard, certain something worse is wrong.
Chapter 7: A Desperate Decision
In Guinea, Nina tries to work but can’t stomach another camp; her father’s death has shredded the professional distance she’s always relied on. She calls Danny and meets him on Mnemba Island, where he tries to get her to talk. She shuts the door with sex instead of words, unable to say what she feels.
Back in Washington, Jeff tells Meredith their family is collapsing—exactly as their father feared—and that her fixation on caring for Anya is the latest chapter in her lifelong effort to win their mother’s love. Meredith promises to hire help “soon.” Then she walks into chaos: wallpaper ripped down and boiling on the stove; Anya’s hands bleeding from cuts made with an X-Acto knife. When Dr. Burns arrives, Anya is suddenly sane again, breezy about “redecorating.” He recommends a short stay at Parkview for rehab and safety. Gutted, Meredith agrees. That night she calls Nina for backup, hears a boyfriend answer and Nina sounding bright and far away, and hangs up without confessing what she’s done.
Chapter 8: The Rescue
Nina’s editor, Sylvie, tells her the latest photos are unusable—and that her grief is all over the frames. The professional failure jolts Nina back to her father’s deathbed promise: make Anya finish the fairy tale. She flies home, heads to Belye Nochi, and learns Anya is at Parkview.
She storms the place her father called “death on the layaway plan,” finds Anya knitting in a sterile room, and explodes. Meredith arrives with food; the sisters go at each other—Nina accusing Meredith of “dumping” their mother, Meredith raging at Nina for judging from a distance. Anya snaps them silent. Meredith departs in icy silence. Nina, shaken, returns to the room, tells Anya she is going home, and wheels her out—accepting the responsibility she has avoided for years.
Chapter 9: A Kamikaze Mission
Meredith decides to let Nina try and fail. She arrives at Belye Nochi to find mess and the sound of Anya telling a piece of the fairy tale in the winter garden. Meredith interrupts, brings Anya inside, and shows Nina the wrecked dining room—ripped paper, dried blood—as proof. A truck backfires; Anya races in, panicked, whispering about guns and a “hungry lion.” Meredith soothes her; Nina insists this is not insanity but terror breaking the surface.
The sisters clash. Nina argues the only way forward is through the story—a belief in Storytelling as a Means of Healing and Connection. Meredith calls it a “kamikaze mission” and pushes for a senior apartment in Wenatchee. Anya overhears and tells them to remember their luck in having each other. That night, Meredith tries to salvage her marriage with a romantic setup. Jeff comes home late; the fight ends with him walking out and saying, “You’re like her, you know that, don’t you?” Alone, Meredith is slammed by a childhood memory: breaking herself to “fix” the winter garden for her mother, only to meet a rage that still burns.
Chapter 10: Dinner Conversation
Nina spends the day coaxing a fairy tale that refuses to be told; Anya slips away from questions and upstairs when pressed. Meredith returns to Belye Nochi, hiding that Jeff has left. Nina shocks them into a reset: she pours vodka and declares a new ritual—talk at dinner.
They each share a favorite song, a cherished childhood moment, and something they regret:
- Nina: “Born to be Wild,” fishing with her dad, and making Meredith’s life harder.
- Anya: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” watching children make snow angels, and that her daughters are not friends.
- Meredith: “Candle in the Wind,” ice-skating with her dad, and that she and Nina aren’t close.
The conversation is awkward, fragile, real. Afterward, Nina tries again for the fairy tale; Anya flees. Meredith sits outside all night, tasting the collapse of her marriage and the hurt it will unleash on her daughters. Morning comes, and she seeks control in the only place left—boxing up her mother’s life for the move.
Key Events
- Meredith’s control-first coping fractures her marriage; Jeff leaves.
- Anya’s erratic episodes escalate from hoarding to self-harm; Dr. Burns calls it grief and recommends Parkview.
- Nina’s work fails; she returns to keep her promise and removes Anya from the nursing home.
- The sisters split over solutions: practical placement versus truth through story.
- A ritualized dinner cracks decades of silence.
Character Development
The three women move from avoidance to confrontation—of the past, of each other, and of themselves.
- Meredith: Doubles down on competence to outrun pain, then loses the marriage she’s trying to protect. Jeff’s “You’re like her” forces her to face the similarities she fears with Anya.
- Nina: Drops the armor of the detached observer and steps into the story she has always photographed from the edges. She chooses family responsibility over flight.
- Anya: Oscillates between crisp lucidity and trauma-driven behaviors, revealing a mind haunted rather than simply failing. Her refusal to finish the fairy tale hints at a past too dangerous to name.
- Jeff: Moves from steady support to self-preservation, his departure catalyzing Meredith’s reckoning.
Themes & Symbols
Trauma surfaces, then shapes choices. In these chapters, the family learns that not all disorientation is disease; much of it is the The Enduring Impact of Trauma and War. Anya’s hoarding, boiling wallpaper, and panic at loud noises map directly onto a history of starvation and violence. The sisters’ grief takes opposite forms—Meredith’s suppression, Nina’s flight—isolating them in parallel rather than bonding them in shared Love, Loss, and Grief.
At the core stands the family bond itself: brittle, unequal, and formative. Mother-Daughter Relationships drive the plot—Meredith’s lifelong project to earn Anya’s approval and Nina’s compensatory distance. And behind all of it waits Family Secrets and Hidden Pasts: the fairy tale as a sealed door, the winter garden as the lock.
Symbols
- The Winter Garden: Cold, controlled, and unforgiving, it mirrors Anya’s emotional climate and stores the past under glass. Meredith’s childhood “fixing” exposes her lifelong, doomed attempt to earn warmth by pleasing.
- The Fairy Tale: A smuggled container for memory. It is the only language Anya trusts to hold the unsayable—and the only route Nina believes can lead to healing.
- Food: From stashed pierogies to boiled wallpaper to overflowing freezers, food tracks deprivation’s scar, revealing a mind still living under siege.
Key Quotes
“You’re like her, you know that, don’t you?” This is Jeff’s parting shot and the novel’s harsh mirror for Meredith. It collapses her self-image as the sane, steady caretaker and confronts her with the generational echo she fears: control as a shield that freezes love.
“Death on the layaway plan.” Evan’s phrase for the nursing home becomes Nina’s rallying cry. It frames Parkview not as a neutral solution but as a slow erasure of personhood—fueling Nina’s rescue and the sisters’ philosophical split.
“Kamikaze mission.” Meredith’s label for Nina’s storytelling plan reveals her worldview: facing the past is suicidal, not salvific. The metaphor underscores how threatening vulnerability feels to someone surviving on control.
“Redecorating.” Anya’s glib word for the wallpaper-and-blood scene exposes the split between appearance and reality. The euphemism signals how survival taught her to mask terror with tidy explanations.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
Chapters 6–10 break the family’s stalemate. Evan’s absence removes the buffer that kept old wounds quiet, forcing a choice between burying the past and unearthing it. Meredith’s marriage collapses; Nina’s career buckles; Anya’s symptoms move from background noise to the engine of the plot. The sisters’ clash—placement versus truth—sets the novel’s central question: does healing come from control, or from finally telling the story that froze them all?