We did have it so good.
-- Cameron Post (Narrator) (chapter 1)

Importance: Cameron reminisces about her youth when her life was much simpler. This foreshadows future complications that she has to deal with once she grows older and has many pressing issues to face.

So when Grandma met us on the front steps in her purple housecoat, and hugged a stiff Mr. Klauson beneath the orange glow of the porch light, the millers swooping around their awkward embrace, and then sat me on the couch, and gave me the mug of now lukewarm, too-sweet tea she had been drinking, and wrapped my hands in hers and told me that she was just sitting down to watch TV when the doorbell rang, and it was a state trooper, and there had been an accident, and Mom and Dad, my mom and dad, had died, the first thing I thought, the very first thing, was: She doesn’t...
-- Cameron Post (Narrator) (chapter 2)