Summary

Heather and Brian argue again over the transplant risk. He gives the analogy of ten children crossing the street, wherein only nine will make it safely to the other side. He asks Heather if she would send Gracie across that street. Although she understands the risks, saying aloud that her daughter might die “was a sacrilege” (138), and there is no way to outweigh the risk of doing nothing. She describes their current position as fear, confusion and a “trial by fire, and we were in the middle part, where you burn” (139).

Heather and Brian find a new apartment in Brooklyn and she meets their new neighbor, Kathy. She felt that they were “a matched set: two mothers with a toddler and an infant (almost) apiece, aspirational creatives bogged down by small people. When we shook, it felt as if we’d brokered a...