Summary

As the novel opens, Emma, one of four main characters, is stalled in front of her computer, unable to work. Her husband Paul, a university professor, arrives home. As Emma prepares dinner, a newspaper article catches her attention. A baby's skeleton has been unearthed at a work site in another part of the city. The news terrifies Emma, and she is so distracted that the dinner burns. Paul is kind and dismisses the error as simply something that can happen when reading, yet Emma knows that it is her hidden past that is the true source of her distraction. She wonders if Jude, her mother, has seen the news article.

At this point the narrative shifts to the third person, past tense. That same morning Kate Waters, a news reporter, was working on rewriting others' poorly written articles and chatting with her colleague...