Summary

Dani looks at the portrait of her grandmother in her office and asks "Who are you to me?" (229). She takes the portrait down, feeling that, as the rigid structures of her identity have begun to fall away, she now feels a sense of openness and possibility.

She remembers Jacob's birth and her mother's assertion that her son looks so much like her father's Shapiro side of the family. She also remembers that when Jacob fell very sick as a baby with a possibly hereditary condition, her mother said nothing. Regardless, Dani believes that her mother "believed that he was my father's grandson as well," demonstrating the power of "the narrative my mother clung to" (230). This idea is further reinforced when Dani finds old letters her mother had sent to her before her death and other mementos from her childhood which highlight...