Summary

The next chapter is titled “sandcastles.” Doyle discusses the fragility and risk of women defining themselves by their relationships with others, as a wife or a mother or a friend or a career woman. All those things change, she says, leaving women feeling lost. “We build sandcastles,” she comments, “and then try to live inside them, fearing the inevitable tide” (303). Instead, she says, women have to build their own identities, being sure of who they are inside so that when the tide does come and wash away externals, the internal remains the same.

The next chapter is titled “guitars.” In present-tense narration, Doyle describes feeling upset when Abby tells her she is going back to a childhood pastime of playing hockey for fun. She contemplates how it must be nice to be able to have fun, and then realizes how her doorbell is...