Summary

This section is the first half of Part III, and starts with Deya’s perspective in winter 2008 as she runs back onto the R train. She stares at the newspaper clipping dated October 17, 1997, titled, “MOTHER OF FOUR MURDERED IN BROOKLYN BASEMENT” (243). It details how Isra was beaten to death by her husband Adam, who fled the scene of the crime and killed himself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. Deya keeps bursting into tears, and looking into her reflection on the train and seeing a fool. The perspective ends as she thinks “Sarah was right: her life was her own and only she controlled it” (245).

The perspective changes to Isra in the fall of 1996, as she is miserable and exhausted, now as a mother of four. She goes through her routine of waking up and getting the girls ready every day. She has...