Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope meet on their first day as rookie cops patrolling the rough streets of the Bronx.

The Gleeson and Stanhope families settle into neighboring houses in the quiet suburban town of Gillam.

Growing up next door to each other, Peter Stanhope and Kate Gleeson form a close and lasting friendship.

Anne Stanhope threatens Peter with a meat mallet and demands he end all contact with Kate Gleeson.

Peter sneaks out the night before junior high graduation and shares a first kiss with Kate Gleeson.

Lena Gleeson storms to the Stanhopes' door with Peter's note; moments later Peter runs over saying Anne has a gun.

Anne Stanhope shoots Francis Gleeson in the face with Brian's service pistol at point-blank range.

Anne is found mentally incompetent and committed to a state psychiatric hospital in Albany.

Brian Stanhope tells Peter he is leaving for South Carolina and abandons him to the care of Uncle George.

Francis endures years of grueling physical rehabilitation, losing an eye and living with a severely disfigured face.

Peter Stanhope and Kate Gleeson reunite in a New York City bar years after the shooting separated them.

Peter and Kate marry despite both the Stanhope and Gleeson families' resistance to their union.

Peter accidentally discharges his service weapon during a routine arrest, triggering a departmental disciplinary review.

Kate drives Peter to a New Jersey rehabilitation facility while Anne stays behind to watch the grandchildren.

Peter returns from rehab and later renews his commitment to Kate on their wedding anniversary.

Two Irish American police families meet in the Bronx and settle into neighboring houses in the suburbs, where their children form a bond that neither family expects to last. Anne Stanhope's long-hidden instability erupts in a shooting that shatters both households and echoes through the decades that follow. The aftermath scatters the Stanhopes — Anne to a psychiatric hospital, Brian to self-imposed exile — while the Gleesons struggle to rebuild around Francis's devastating injuries. Despite years of forced separation, Peter and Kate find their way back to each other, marry, and attempt to build a life together. Peter's deepening alcoholism mirrors his father's failures and pushes the family toward a second crisis before he finally accepts help. After treatment, Peter and Kate confront their past honestly and renew their commitment, choosing each other again with full knowledge of what that choice costs.

The milestone events that define the Stanhope-Gleeson story.

Brian Stanhope shows Francis Gleeson the photos of Anne, his brother George, and a St. Michael prayer card he keeps in his police cap.

After arresting a shooter at a robbery scene, Brian helps himself to a beer from the store's refrigerator.

Anne Stanhope's first baby is delivered stillborn, a trauma she carries silently for the rest of her life.

During a sudden school snow dismissal, Anne slaps Peter over a broken model ship and Brian tries to drive Peter to safety in Queens.

Anne rants at deli customers on New Year's Eve and is taken by ambulance; paramedics find Brian's loaded gun in her purse.

Lena Gleeson tells Kate that Anne shot Francis hoping the entire Gleeson family would move away and Peter would be safe from Kate.

Kate briefly and indifferently dates an older student while away from home and has sex for the first time.

Peter accepts a full athletic scholarship to a small New Jersey college, where he chooses to study history.

Kate is accepted at NYU to study forensics as Lena takes a second job to make ends meet.

Uncle George warns Peter as he leaves for college to be careful with alcohol, hinting at a dark family history.

Anne is released from the state hospital to a halfway house and begins meaningful therapy with a new doctor.

Lena Gleeson is diagnosed with cancer at the same time Francis is secretly having an affair with a neighbor.

Lena confronts Francis about his affair with Joan Kavanaugh, telling him she never would have done the same to him.

Kate and Peter drive to Gillam to ask Francis Gleeson for help getting Peter onto the police force.

Brian Stanhope's death is reported; his lawyer delivers a padded envelope containing worn family photographs and a prayer card.

Before the shooting that defines both families, small signs reveal the fragility beneath their suburban lives — a beer taken from a crime scene, a gun found in a purse, a stillborn child never grieved aloud. In the aftermath of the shooting, Peter and Kate separately rebuild their lives, each carrying the weight of what happened without speaking of it directly. The Gleeson marriage is tested when Lena's cancer diagnosis arrives in the same period Francis is hiding an affair, and Lena confronts him with unflinching honesty. Meanwhile, Peter and Kate navigate their reunion cautiously, eventually asking Francis to use his influence to help Peter join the police force. Peter's struggle with alcohol quietly accelerates until the department's intervention forces a reckoning. The novel closes with a posthumous message from Brian — a worn envelope of family photographs — a small and unexpected acknowledgment of the bonds he spent decades running from.

The formative moments and secondary storylines that shaped both families.

After witnessing the aftermath of a deadly robbery in the Bronx, Francis Gleeson decides he cannot raise a family in the city.

Peter folds a secret message into a paper airplane and lofts it over the fence onto the Gleesons' lawn for Kate.

Uncle George reveals that Brian watched Anne take the gun from the kitchen cabinet on the night of the shooting but chose to go upstairs.

Anne refuses to meet Peter during a hospital visit; a devastated Peter mails Kate a letter he writes while drunk.

After moving into her own apartment, Anne hires a private detective to track down her estranged son Peter.

Francis begins a full affair with divorcee Joan Kavanaugh, feeling young and unbroken for the first time since the shooting.

Kate tells Francis she has received a letter from Peter Stanhope; Francis orders her not to pursue any contact with him.

During the police psychological fitness interview, Peter struggles to answer questions about his parents' troubled histories.

Kate Gleeson confronts Anne Stanhope on a bench near their local bakery and coldly orders her to stay away from Peter.

Anne's hidden history is revealed: her mother's suicide by drowning and the years of sexual abuse by a neighbor that followed.

Desperate about Peter's drinking, Kate reaches out to Anne and invites her to visit the family home.

Anne visits Peter and Kate's home and is reminded of her therapist's warning that we repeat what we don't repair.

Francis makes an unannounced visit while Anne watches the grandchildren; the two speak face to face for the first time since the shooting.

Lena tells Francis she believes they have been luckier than most people, and Francis sees his family with sudden clarity.

Peter teaches his first history class and realizes that history is not the past but lives inside people in the present.

Beneath the surface of both families' lives runs a current of concealed truths that quietly determine the course of the story. A decision to leave the city, a secret note folded into a paper airplane, and a father's deliberate inaction on the night of the shooting each set consequences in motion that take decades to resolve. Anne's private vigil outside her son's life and Kate's cold confrontation of her reveal how thoroughly the past controls the present. The disclosure of Anne's childhood trauma — her mother's suicide and the sexual abuse that followed — reframes her actions and invites compassion where only blame had existed. When Kate finally reaches out to Anne for help, and when Francis and Anne face each other for the first time since the shooting, both acts of courage unlock a forgiveness that years of distance could not provide. Peter's classroom realization that history lives inside people — not behind them — brings the novel's central question to a quiet and earned resolution.

The hidden decisions, buried secrets, and long-delayed reckonings that drive the story.