Summary

In Chapter 1, Alice visits her father, Leonard Stern, in the hospital. She visits him whenever she has a day off from her job as an admissions officer at Belvedere School. She studied art in college. Alice is almost forty years old while her father is seventy-three. They live in New York City. Whenever Matt, Alice’s boyfriend, or one of her friends ask her how she is, she is unsure how to respond. Alice is familiar with the nurses thanks to her father’s prolonged illness. Alice’s mother, Serena, once told her that hearing is the last sense that people lose, so Alice often tells Leonard she loves him—something she rarely did before he got sick.

In Chapter 2, Alice texts Serena to say that her dad seems the same. She does this every time, even though her parents are divorced. Alice...