Summary

Brian picks up Gracie from day care to introduce her to Gabriel at the hospital. On the car ride home, Gracie presses her foot to Gabriel’s face, causing him to begin crying loudly. Heather shouts at her daughter although she could “relate to her irrational urges, her free-floating aggression. Not toward the baby – I was besotted with this boy of big lips, thick blood, powerful heart – but toward Brian” (122). She remembers how scared she felt in the minutes after Gabriel was born, “when I’d experienced a minicrisis of continued bleeding and pain, Brian had needed to focus on collecting the cord blood, rather than on me. As much as I understood this rationally, I was plagued by a lingering sense that Brian had turned away at the crucial moment” (123).

Heather and Brian spend time at her mother’s cottage by the...