Summary

Chapter 15 takes place in July and August; it is a retelling of the past. Marin had stopped eating dinner at home with Gramps, seemingly practicing for their future “without each other” (150). One day in the basement, Marin found one of Gramps’s socks stuffed with bloody handkerchiefs. She examined and then washed them before folding them and returning them to Gramps, by setting them on the pile of his clean clothes in the living room. He was in the room when Marin entered and looked to the pile of laundry. Marin asked if he had been to a doctor, and he laughed, calling the conversation “very American” (151). He held up a bottle of whiskey and asked her if she ever drinks it. She denied the habit, despite the one night when she took the bottle to the beach with Mabel. He then said...