Alternating the viewpoints of the two central protagonists after they learn of the fatal crash involving Denise Thompson provides increasing tension and momentum to the plotline. Cooney allows the reader to feel the increasing anxiety and guilt pressing upon Morgan as he watches the late news with his parents. Remy tries to distance herself from involvement with the accident until the following afternoon when she associates her beloved baby brother Henry with Denise Thompson's young son.

Remy stayed home with Henry while everybody else was out.. . . Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, when they were crawling backward down the stairs, which was his new thrill of the week, she thought: Denise Thompson's little boy isn't much older than this. She isn't crawling backward down the stairs with her baby son. She's dead. She'll never see her son grow up.

Remy began sobbing, first soundlessly and...