Summary

As the adult Cal ruminates on the solitary nature of writing and how it suits his present inability to pursue intimacy, he fast-forwards his story briefly to his college years, describing a time when he was more open to close relationships with others: he had a girlfriend, Olivia, who had been brutally assaulted at age thirteen. Both emotionally stunted, they gently initiated each other into intimacy. But after college he traveled and joined the Foreign Service so he would never be anywhere long enough to develop lasting relationships. Though he once proposed to an unlikely girl in Brussels who didn’t mind his physical differences, she ran off with someone else.

The narrative returns to the spring of Callie’s eighth grade year at Baker and Inglis as her parents recover from Chapter Eleven’s Christmas outburst. Callie takes an...