Eleanor Bennett dies from cancer complications in Southern California, setting her family's long-suppressed secrets in motion.

Benny and Byron are brought to the family lawyer's office and told to listen to their mother's recording.

Eleanor's recording opens by shocking Benny and Byron with news that they have a half-sister they never knew.

The recording reveals how Covey's father arranged her marriage to crime boss Little Man Henry to settle gambling debts.

Little Man collapses at his own wedding reception, and Covey seizes the chaos to flee into the ocean.

Covey enrolls in a London nursing program and befriends Eleanor Douglas, another Caribbean island woman dreaming of a new life.

The train to Edinburgh crashes, killing Eleanor Douglas instantly and leaving Covey to be misidentified at the hospital.

Covey's supervisor at the shipping company sexually assaults her; she quits and later discovers she is pregnant.

Covey gives her newborn daughter, whom she names Mathilda, to adoption services and makes a silent promise to find her someday.

Covey and Gibbs reunite by chance in London and together reinvent themselves as Bert and Eleanor Bennett, heading to America.

Benny comes out as bisexual at Thanksgiving dinner, triggering a family confrontation that leads to eight years of estrangement.

Eleanor stumbles on a YouTube video about chayote and immediately recognizes the presenter, Marble Martin, as her lost daughter.

Eleanor dies before reuniting with Marble; her lawyer texts Marble as instructed, setting the long-delayed reunion in motion.

Marble flies to Los Angeles and meets her half-siblings Benny and Byron for the first time.

The three siblings scatter their parents' ashes and crumbles of Eleanor's last black cake into the Pacific Ocean together.

Eleanor Bennett's death in 2018 opens the novel and brings her estranged children together to hear a recording she left behind. That recording dismantles everything Benny and Byron believed about their mother, revealing her true identity as Coventina Lyncook—a Caribbean girl who fled a forced marriage, survived a train crash, and built an entirely new life under a stolen name. The backstory follows Covey's flight from the island, her friendship with Eleanor Douglas, her assault and reluctant surrender of a child to adoption, and her eventual reunion with her first love in London. Back in the present, Eleanor's final act of motherhood—the recording itself—engineers a reunion between her two known children and the daughter she gave up nearly fifty years earlier. Marble Martin travels to Los Angeles, and the three siblings meet for the first time, beginning the difficult work of becoming a family. The novel closes as the three scatter their parents' ashes into the Pacific, completing a long circle of loss, secrecy, and reconciliation.

The headline events of Covey's journey from Caribbean bride to California mother.

Benny is fired from her telemarketing job the very same day she receives the call that her mother has died.

Byron remembers that Benny returned for their father's funeral but watched the burial from a taxi, too estranged to join.

Teenage Covey and her best friend Bunny challenge each other to swim farther and farther into open Caribbean waters.

Hurricane Flora traps Covey, Bunny, and Gibbs at sea; Lin beats Covey afterward and bans her from further ocean training.

Lin watches his convenience store burn to the ground, finally grasping the full weight of his gambling debts to Little Man.

Gibbs prepares to leave for London to study law and urgently begs Covey to come with him before it is too late.

After the wedding chaos, Bunny helps Covey safely escape the island and arranges her passage to London.

Eleanor Douglas shares her childhood fascination with geology and her frustration that island women are denied equal professional opportunities in London.

Benny bakes one of her mother's black cakes, photographs every step, and mails it as an apology and peace offering.

Widowed Eleanor confides her darkest secrets to lawyer Charles Mitch, who quietly agrees to help her find her lost daughter.

Benny tells Byron the full truth about Steve's violence and the hospitalization it caused, and the estranged siblings embrace.

Cutting into the frozen black cake, the three siblings find photographs, seashells, and antique jewelry baked inside by their mother.

Byron confronts grandfather Lin face-to-face and erupts in anger, demanding he acknowledge his role in destroying their mother's life.

Lin suffers a debilitating stroke hours after Byron's confrontation and dies shortly after.

While promoting an electronics store in a meerkat costume, Benny catches the genuine interest of a man with his child.

Pool 2 covers the formative secondary events that give the novel its depth, beginning with Covey and Bunny's childhood friendship and the forces that put Covey's freedom at risk on the island. It follows Gibbs's departure for London, Bunny's crucial role in Covey's escape after the wedding, and the early London life of Eleanor Douglas, whose backstory sets up the fateful train journey to Edinburgh. In the present-day strand, Benny's baking of a peace-offering black cake and Charles Mitch's quiet devotion to Eleanor show the private gestures of love running beneath the novel's larger drama. After Eleanor's death, the siblings' emotional breakthroughs—Benny's confession about Steve's violence, the treasure hidden inside the frozen cake, and Byron's explosive confrontation with their grandfather Lin—reveal the full cost of decades of silence. The pool closes with Lin's death and a small, tentatively hopeful moment for Benny, who catches a stranger's genuine interest while working in a meerkat costume.

The supporting moments and secondary characters who give the family's story its emotional texture.

Covey's mother Mathilda disappears when Covey is five, leaving their shared time baking black cake as Covey's only memory of her.

Covey falls in love with surfer Gibbs Grant while training for the harbor race, feeling joyfully helpless for the first time.

Lin finally admits to Covey that catastrophic gambling debts have forced him to arrange her marriage to Little Man.

Covey wakes in hospital after the train crash, discovers she has been registered as Eleanor Douglas, and chooses to keep the identity.

Covey resolves never to contact Gibbs or anyone from the island, deciding it is safer if everyone believes she is dead.

As a teenager, Marble Martin notices her appearance is strikingly different from her white adoptive parents and begins questioning her identity.

Eleanor attempts suicide by paddling her surfboard into dangerous Pacific surf; a lifeguard rescues her and brings her to shore.

Byron takes Eleanor to a motivational conference, where Eleanor visibly recognizes the celebrity swimmer onstage as her childhood friend Bunny.

Etta Pringle spots Eleanor in the audience, recognizes her lost friend Covey, and hands her a business card after the show.

Eleanor calls Marble's phone number but cannot bring herself to speak a single word when Marble answers.

Benny finds her mother's black cake recipe in a kitchen drawer and discovers it lists only ingredients with no measurements.

Byron sees a news broadcast and realizes his ex-girlfriend Lynette is noticeably pregnant with what must be his child.

Byron rushes to the hospital as Lynette gives birth and, seeing his newborn son for the first time, feels the sudden conviction of fatherhood.

Etta Pringle confesses to Benny and Byron that she was the one who poisoned Little Man's champagne glass at the wedding.

Byron paddles alone into dangerous early-morning surf against weather warnings, finally surrendering to the ocean's unmappable uncertainty.

Pool 3 traces the novel's most emotionally charged turning points, from Covey's earliest loss—her mother's disappearance—to her first experience of love and the crushing weight of her father's confession. It follows Covey's most consequential decision: choosing, in a hospital bed after a train crash, to become someone else entirely rather than return to the life she feared. In the present, Eleanor's failed suicide attempt and her stunned recognition of Bunny at a motivational conference mark the pivot toward honesty and reconnection that defines the novel's second half. The pool captures the private anguish of Eleanor's silenced phone call to her lost daughter and Benny's quiet epiphany upon finding a recipe with no measurements, understanding at last that identity—like baking—cannot be reduced to exact quantities. It closes with three revelations that reorder the family's understanding of their history: Byron's unexpected fatherhood, Bunny's long-held confession about Little Man's death, and Byron's final surrender to the unpredictability of the open ocean.

The pivotal decisions and quiet discoveries that transform each character's sense of self.