Four recent college graduates — Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm — move into a cramped Lispenard Street apartment and begin building their adult lives.

Jude wakes Willem in the night and asks for an emergency ride to his doctor, revealing he has been badly injured from cutting himself.

Jude becomes law professor Harold Stein's research assistant and is gradually welcomed into Harold and his wife Julia's personal life as a surrogate son.

JB's gallery show reveals he displayed two unapproved paintings of a vulnerable Jude, deeply fracturing their friendship.

Harold and Julia tell Jude at Thanksgiving that they want to legally adopt him as their adult son.

Jude becomes the legal adopted son of Harold and Julia in a court ceremony attended by his closest friends.

Jude takes a corporate law firm job and buys a spacious loft from his friend Richard to better accommodate his disability.

During a drug intervention, JB performs a mocking impression of Jude's disabled limp, ending their friendship a second time.

Jude begins a relationship with fashion executive Caleb, who grows contemptuous of Jude's wheelchair and becomes violently abusive.

Caleb delivers a final savage beating, stripping Jude naked, throwing his wheelchair down the stairwell, and leaving him unconscious.

Jude carefully plans a suicide attempt, finalizes his will, and slashes his wrists in the shower, but is discovered before he dies.

Jude and Willem decide to transition their longtime close friendship into a romantic relationship.

After a prolonged bone infection in his legs, Jude undergoes amputation surgery and faces a long, painful recovery.

Willem is killed when a car runs a red light and strikes his vehicle while he is driving Malcolm and Sophie from the train station.

Jude kills himself by injecting air into an artery, leaving written confessions and farewell letters for his loved ones.

Jude St. Francis arrives in New York City as a recent college graduate, forming an inseparable bond with Willem, JB, and Malcolm as they each pursue their professional dreams. Despite achieving remarkable success as a lawyer, Jude's hidden self-harm and mysterious past cast long shadows over his adult life. A loving adoption by his former law professor Harold Stein and his wife Julia offers the parental bond Jude never had, but a brutal abusive relationship with a man named Caleb destroys any fragile sense of safety he has built. Jude survives a suicide attempt and finds romantic love with Willem, his most devoted friend. His physical health deteriorates until his legs are amputated, and after a brief period of flourishing, Willem is killed in a car accident, breaking Jude beyond recovery. Jude ultimately takes his own life, never having escaped the damage of a childhood defined by relentless abuse.

The headline events of Jude's life, from friendship to tragedy.

The friends accidentally lock themselves on the roof of Lispenard Street and must lower Jude to break in through his window.

Willem's beloved brother Hemming dies from cerebral palsy complications, followed within a year by the deaths of both Willem's parents.

Social worker Ana tends to hospitalized teenage Jude after his serious injury, becoming the first adult to show him genuine care.

Andy institutes a weekly appointment system to monitor Jude's cutting, hoping that the routine will eventually shame him into stopping.

JB mails one of his paintings of Jude as an apology for the gallery betrayal, and Jude contacts him to accept.

Willem's girlfriend Philippa ends their four-year relationship, telling him she can never be his top priority while Jude is in his life.

Malcolm, now a celebrated architect, designs ADA-accessible renovations for Jude's new loft, tailoring every detail to Jude's mobility needs.

After Caleb publicly humiliates Jude at a restaurant, Jude reluctantly confesses the abusive relationship to Harold in their car.

Harold arrives the morning after Caleb's final attack to find Jude badly beaten and rushes him immediately to Andy.

Willem asks, as a birthday gift, that Jude explain who 'Brother Luke' is, having heard the name in Jude's nightmare.

Desperate for Jude to understand his pain, Willem cuts his own arm in front of Jude during an argument about self-harm.

Andy calls Jude's phone about his burns, and Willem answers by accident, learning that Jude has escalated from cutting to burning himself.

Willem wakes at a Truro holiday stay to find Jude cutting in the bathroom and attacks him in fury, calling him sick and crazy.

At JB's Whitney Museum retrospective, Jude sees a new painting of Willem gazing with love at something off-frame and is overcome with grief.

Harold discovers Jude's adoption-day gift — a recording of himself singing — tucked between books on a shelf in his study.

While the main plot traces Jude's arc, the novel is filled with pivotal secondary events that illuminate the lives of those around him and the texture of his daily relationships. Willem's early family losses — his brother Hemming's death and the passing of both parents — help explain his fierce devotion to chosen family, while a compassionate social worker named Ana becomes the first adult to show teenage Jude genuine care. Friends like Andy and Malcolm find practical ways to protect and accommodate Jude, though their efforts are constantly tested by how little he lets them in. The complicated arc of JB's friendship with Jude moves from betrayal to grudging reconciliation, while Willem's romantic relationship with Jude is strained by secrets, self-harm, and painful confrontations. These secondary moments accumulate into a portrait of people who love Jude deeply but cannot reach far enough past his defenses to truly save him.

The supporting moments that shaped Jude's world and relationships.

Andy privately tells Willem he suspects Jude's wound was a deliberate suicide attempt, hinting at dark depths beneath Jude's composed exterior.

Monk Brother Luke shows mercy when Jude destroys his daffodils and invites Jude to his greenhouse, beginning a careful grooming process.

Brother Luke convinces Jude to run away from the monastery with him, promising they will build a peaceful life together in a cabin.

Brother Luke reveals he has arranged for Jude to perform sexual acts with male clients to earn money for their travels.

Police raid the motel room and Brother Luke hangs himself in the bathroom, ending his years of exploitation of Jude.

Jude quietly writes farewell letters to his loved ones and finalizes his will in careful preparation for a planned suicide attempt.

After recovering from his suicide attempt, Jude begins telling Willem about his past by recounting the story of his burned hand.

Jude seeks out JB and genuinely forgives him, fully reuniting the original four friends for the first time since JB's cruel impression.

Jude reads Caleb's obituary in the newspaper and tells Willem the complete story of their abusive relationship for the first time.

Dr. Traylor runs Jude over with his car in an open field, causing the permanent spinal damage Jude carries for the rest of his life.

After a violent Truro confrontation, Willem gives Jude an ultimatum: begin therapy twice a week or the relationship is over.

Jude tells Willem the full story of his traumatic childhood, a confession that takes an entire day and profoundly shocks Willem.

Jude agrees to the amputation of his lower legs, accepting for the first time that he is a person with a disability.

After Jude smashes a plate in rage, Harold and Julia embrace him anyway, giving him his first experience of unconditional parental love.

Harold's final letter is revealed to be addressed to Willem even after Willem's death, because Harold cannot stop the habit of talking to him.

Beneath Jude's composed adult life lies a childhood of relentless abuse, revealed gradually through flashbacks that reframe everything the reader thinks they understand about him. Brother Luke's careful grooming and eventual exploitation of young Jude mark the most formative wound of his early years, while Dr. Traylor's imprisonment and assault leave permanent physical damage that Jude carries into every adult relationship. These revelations are interwoven with the key turning points of Jude's adult life — the first tentative attempts to confide in Willem, his acceptance of his disability before the amputation, and the rare moments when he allows himself to be truly known. Each breakthrough, from forgiving JB to confessing his full history to Willem to collapsing into Harold's embrace, represents a hard-won emotional peak in a life defined by self-concealment. Yet every step toward openness ultimately meets the immovable wall of Jude's conviction that his past makes him unworthy of love.