“And it wasn’t just Charlie he feared. The whole gang would be there, everyone he’d lived with at Middlebury. Garrett had avoided them, more or less successfully, since college. He couldn’t bear to talk about Elias—or worse, watch them dance around the subject, pretending their friend had never existed.”

Garrett has never again felt comfortable around his friends since the accidental death of their friend Elias, for which he blames himself. The event casts a constant shadow, present whenever they are together even if no one mentions it. Silences of this kind—sources of pain that are ever-present but rarely discussed—form a key motif in the novel, shaping the lives of its characters.

“When I see you it fills me with the opposite of disgust, which I know doesn’t exactly sound like high praise but for me is sort of like the return to the world. It’s like I stop being a mess of exploded thoughts for a second and am just happy to be human.

In the email to Cece in which Garrett reveals that he is in love with her, he explains the way he finds her presence transformative. There is something inexplicable that lifts his depression and suddenly causes Garrett to feel alive once again, in ways he has not felt since the death of Elias. The unusual phrase “the opposite of disgust” conveys the difficulty he has in expressing his feelings, but it also implies that he has primarily felt disgust with himself and with the world for some time. Cece relieves that feeling.

“Garrett seemed so confident and relaxed, so at ease in this world of endless snow—so, well, Montanan—that Charlie second-guessed himself. The feeling faded. He remembered the way that Garrett had looked the first day they’d met, before sliding down that icy path in his boots. The same invincible playground grin. And nothing had happened then. Well, Charlie had sprained his arm, yes—but he’d also made the best friends of his life.”

Charlie quickly becomes reliant on Garrett after Garrett prevents him from being hit by a car when he slides on the ice. This accident will become a parallel to the death of Elias in an avalanche. In this second incident, Garrett cannot save his friend. This happens just after Charlie thinks of the importance of his friendship to Garrett in this quote.

“How strange it was to step foot on the porch, knowing Cece was inside somewhere—that she might know how he felt about her. But of course she didn’t. The effect of Cece’s virtue, on Garrett, was profound. She’d read the second email he’d sent and then deleted the original, his confession of love, as he’d asked her to. Who else would have the moral strength to resist peeking at it. Certainly not Garrett himself. He was more in love with her than ever.”

Garrett elevates Cece to a kind of moral perfection when he believes (wrongly) that she followed his plea to not read the email he sent. Him placing Cece on a pedestal sets a precedent for their marriage in which Garrett will constantly believe that he is undeserving of Cece’s love.

“There was so much agony there—so much guilt and second guessing and trapdoor ambivalence opening to regret—that she didn’t know where to begin. The thing was, she loved Garrett, still desired him on some molecular level she didn’t fully understand. But of course being married to him was a lot different from not being married to him. Not being married was the easiest thing in the world. It was impossible for her to imagine the hunger she’d felt, the dark aching madness that had caused her to blow up her life, as it was to imagine a stranger’s. More impossible, perhaps.”

Here, Cece reflects on the repercussions of her decision to end her brief marriage to Charlie in order to marry Garrett. She frequently finds herself wondering whether this was the right decision: Though she feels guilty about the pain she caused Charlie, she also feels inexplicably compelled toward Garrett. The phrase “desired him on some molecular level” suggests, through metaphor, that her desire for him is embedded in her DNA—a force of nature that defies rational explanation.

“[Cece had] thought about rejecting Charlie’s invitation—why reopen the wound?—but it was important to Garrett, whose guilt, perhaps more than hers, kept him up at night. A pardon they’d never expected, dropped into their laps. But it wasn’t just Garrett. She’d felt pulled here herself, drawn treacherously to the house, the way a murderer might be drawn back to the scene of the crime. She wanted to see what she was missing.”

Upon being invited by Charlie to visit him at his family cottage in Salish, Cece experiences a range of emotions. She has not only her own emotions to consider but also those of Charlie and Garrett, demonstrating how complex their situation is. The simile “the way a murder might be drawn back to the scene of the crime” points toward the guilt that Cece feels about ending her marriage to Charlie and marrying Garrett instead.

“She slid over in her seat and put her hand on Garrett’s leg. It was lean and whittled, from all the time he was spending in the mountains. She could feel his thigh muscle, the animal shape of it. She loved these moments, when she was certain that the choice she’d made—easily the riskiest thing she’d ever done in her life, and hands-down the bravest—was the right one. Cece squeezed his leg. This was the life. This one. It was precious, this certainty, because she knew it wouldn’t last.”

Though Cece sometimes doubts whether marrying Garrett was wise, there are moments like this one when she is certain that she has indeed made the right choice. She clings to these fleeting moments to remind herself of this when she feels distant from Garrett.

“What if this life [Charlie had] built, this life of ‘times’—tummy time and screen time and family time, quiet time and Medieval Times—was just a sentimental trap? Cece had done this to him: made him wonder if the world, if everything he cared about, was a trick. He had been good, he had loved her with the purest of hearts and look what had happened. He’d lost her anyway.”

Charlie is frustrated when the life that he has carved out for himself—one defined by parenthood and domestic life—proves not to have the kind of meaning he expected. Ultimately, his unhappiness can be traced back to the loss of his relationship with Cece, and Charlie harbors resentment toward her for this.

“The truth was, too, that Charlie missed them. Not just Cece, but Garrett as well. His best friend in life; there had been no replacement. Charlie imagined he was a big enough man, a happy enough man, to invite him back into his life. It had been nine years. They had families of their own, they were fathers.

But then Charlie saw her. She got out of the car, a little heavier in the hips but basically the same way he remembered her, and he knew right away he was lost. He smiled, he fawned over Angeliki and the kids, but it was like waking up from some shrewdly convincing dream and trying to pretend you were still in it. Seeing her had not been an inoculation at all. It had been an infection.”

Charlie is compelled to reconnect with Garrett and Cece in order to avoid losing their friendship forever. He recognizes that such close bonds are important, and he is willing to set aside his pride by giving those who have wronged him a second chance. However, when Cece is actually physically present once again, Charlie realizes that this task will be harder than he expected. The analogy of a “shrewdly convincing dream” foreshadows his eventual realization that his life with Angeliki is inauthentic—a performance of happiness that he created to distract himself from the pain of losing Cece.

“[Cece had] thought true love was about being understood: about finding that person who could see the sadness in you, the peep show of crazy you kept from everyone else. But what if it was better to be misunderstood? Not to be reminded all the time, just by looking at your partner’s face, that the peep show was there? What if love wasn’t about sharing yourself completely, about yoking your secret sorrow to another’s, but about finding someone who made you forget yourself?”

In connection with the novel’s key theme, Cece considers the purpose of marriage. Much of her inner conflict is centered around her attempt to determine what a healthy marriage should look like and her habit of gauging her own happiness against this notion.

“[Garrett and Charlie] never talked about Garrett’s betrayal of him, the trespass that had upended his life. Not even once. Incredible, but true. It was like a chest they were afraid to open, worried they might awaken a curse. Which wasn’t to say it wasn’t there all the time, hexing the air between them. God, if only Charlie would mention it! Garrett longed for this sometimes, just to clear the air for a moment. (Dreaded it, too, in equal measure).”

The end of Charlie and Cece’s marriage due to Cece and Garrett falling in love creates a lasting divide between Charlie and Garrett. Though both long for the closeness they once had, the cause of the divide between them continues to be a taboo that neither one of them is willing to break.

“[Charlie] often wondered what it was about Cece Calhoun. Why her in particular? Why? She was just a woman, one among billions. Angeliki was more beautiful than her; even Becky, in a pageant, would probably squeak out on top. Was it only that she’d wounded him so terribly? No—there was more to it than that. It was mysterious, and yet when he thought of Cece it didn’t seem mysterious at all.”

Here, Charlie wrestles with his inability to heal from the damage that Cece has caused by ending their marriage. He cannot stop loving her and tries to pinpoint what it is about Cece that he is drawn to. In the end, that factor is not easily identifiable, but the love he has for her is undoubtedly present.

“All avid skiers shared a secret: they were selfish pricks. They’d shove their own kid into a tree if it meant getting to make first tracks. So it was a gift Charlie was giving his son. He was saying, I know you’re pissed at me, you’re sullen and defiant, but I’m letting you have this: a glade of fresh powder. […] This was the real sacrifice: giving up your own joy, the thing you maybe loved to do more than anything else on earth, so that your kid might someday do it too. Might feel a bit of this joy himself.”

Jasper harbors anger and resentment toward Charlie, and Charlie longs to break through this hatred and rekindle a bond with his son. Here, him “gifting” Jasper the opportunity to ski on the untouched snow first is Charlie’s way of showing Jasper that he loves him. Jasper, Charlie decides, understands the significance and meaning of the gesture by accepting the offer.

“[Garret] found [Cece] was out of earshot. Not literally, of course, but that’s the way it felt. They’d been married twenty-four years, to the day, and yet these spaces still widened between them, ones they didn’t have the energy to cross. Why did they happen? There was no cause to them, really—they were just a feature of living together, like leaky gutters or joint tax returns. And yet if Garrett thought about them too much, he could pitch into despair. They’d chosen to spend their lives with each other. It had not been easy; it had been the easiest thing in the world.”

Here, Garrett speaks about the emotional distance he feels with Cece. Cece also experiences these feelings, though neither articulates this dissonance to the other. Garrett’s thoughts speak to the difficulty in pinpointing exactly how the institution of marriage should function, as he points to the paradoxes it contains.

“They hugged each other’s throats. And in fact, feeling the long-lost sensation of Charlie’s hands on his throat, their clumsy, drunken squeeze, Garrett felt transported for the first time that night, freed from the larger game of Charades he’d been playing all day, pretending to be joyously reunited with his friends and not saddened by how old they looked, how tame and befuddled—by the feeling that even though Brig hadn’t died, they’d all found themselves at a funeral anyway. Charlie squeezed Garrett’s throat harder, choking him a little bit, and so Garrett squeezed harder too.”

Charlie chokes Garrett out of anger and frustration that Charlie cannot let go of his desire for Cece. He targets Garrett as the source of this frustration. The act, though, is one that Garrett and Charlie often performed on one another in a joking manner when they were young. Thus, the gesture here echoes that former gesture of love and affection, conveying through it the words that Garrett and Charlie cannot speak to each other.

“She’d cheated on him with Charlie, most likely in this very house, and yet the news had…made him want to dance? In fact, it had not felt like news at all. Perhaps he’d known for years—known that something had happened between [Charlie and Cece]—but hadn’t admitted it to himself, the way you might feel all the symptoms of a flu before piecing together that you were sick. He hadn’t wanted the burden of being wronged.

He should have felt that burden now. So why did he feel the opposite? Unburdened, as if a weight had been lifted? They were even at last. Him and Charlie. Or at least more even. He could stop feeling so fucking guilty.”

When Charlie confesses his and Cece’s infidelity to Garrett, Garrett finds this revelation ironically freeing. Having someone else be the transgressor feels, for Garrett, like a weight being lifted from his shoulders, and his dancing physically embodies the feeling of this lifted burden.

“But now Lana wondered if she ever truly cared about this or if it was just another way of siding with her father, who was gone half the time and therefore easier to adore. To be honest, Lana didn’t give two shits about marriage. It was an ancient relic, like monogamy itself. Why would she care about something invented five thousand years ago, as a kind of burglar alarm to protect a man’s most valuable property? It astonished her, in this day and age, that anyone would agree to something called ‘wedlock.’ Anyway, it made no room for mistakes. Like was hard; people fucked up in all sorts of indefensible ways. Maybe her mother would have been happier with this man with ridiculous sunglasses, who cared more about people than wolverines.”

Lana realizes that she has been wrong to blame her mother for betraying Charlie by marrying her father. As an adult, however, Lana recognizes that it is unfair to hold this transgression against her mother for so long. Lana, instead, blames the institution of marriage as a flawed state, further complicating one of the novel’s key themes, The Evolving Purpose of Marriage.

“If [Lana] died tomorrow, what could she say to justify being born? […] What on earth had she been doing? Literally: what, on this earth, had she been doing? Something sounded from outside, Footsteps. Lana sat there on the floor, listening to their approach. Her heart was pounding, though she couldn’t say why. You could live out here, pretending to be dead, or you could make a fucking impact. Make sure the earth remembered you. Anything in between was a waste of space.”

In this moment, Lana has a sudden epiphany that she has not made a meaningful contribution to the world and therefore has not lived her life to the fullest. Though she does not know this, it is the same worry that Cece has had throughout much of her adult life. This moment marks a turning point for Lana, as she will go on to make documentary films.

“[Charlie] looked at Garrett, nervous with determination, like a kid working himself up to ask for a dance. So it was finally coming. After all these years. They would talk about it, at last, because it was too late not to. They would clear the air. Amazing, how perfectly—immaculately—this was communicated before Charlie had even opened his mouth.”

Garrett and Charlie are so in tune with one another that Garrett, correctly, predicts the moment when Charlie will finally broach the subject that has been taboo for decades: Garrett’s marriage to Cece. This unspoken topic has created a distance between the two friends, and now that they can talk through the event, they can begin to truly heal their friendship, bringing resolution to a conflict that has shaped the novel and their lives.

“‘The thing is,’ [Charlie said] ‘I know it was for the best. She would have been unhappy with me.’

‘Stop it!’ Garrett said.

Charlie stared at him, startled.

‘No lies, please. There isn’t time. She would have been just as happy with you, and you know it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You would have made her happy and unhappy,’ Garrett said. ‘Like I did. It just would have been different.’”

As Charlie has aged, he has become increasingly accepting and respectful of Cece’s choice to marry Garrett. His words suggest that he believes there is no “one” person whom one is meant to pair with for their entire life and that there are multiple paths to a content and full life.

“Garrett thought this sometimes: that their marriage was extinct. At other times, he thought it might be deeper than ever. They were like those fish living in the darkness, a thousand meters down, sea devils. The male attaches to the female, their bodies slowly fusing together; he shares her bloodstream until they die.”

Here, Garrett unknowingly echoes an opinion about their marriage that Cece once believed to be true: that they have grown disconnected and distant from one another. His use of the word “extinct” is fitting, given his work as a conservationist. Yet the metaphor that Garrett arrives at—of the sea devils—suggests that he is not disconnected from Cece but remains deeply connected to her and nurtured by her, despite her dementia.

“Garrett’s eyes blurred. If only he didn’t love her so much. He loved her and at the same time he missed her terribly. Occasionally, even now, he’d forget about the amyloid deposits on her brain and would talk to her like he used to, asking her where the garlic press was, or if she remembered the name of some trail they used to hike on, and would be met with nothingness. He could hear it sometimes, like wind whistling through a cave. In these moments a kind of terror would seize him, an old feeling of panic, like peering at the sheathed path and realizing Elias was nowhere to be seen. And yet she was here now, climbing the stairs in front of him and ducking under the low-hanging beam, accessing some lockbox in her brain where the memory of its peril was alive and well. She was gone and not gone. Holding her at night, sometimes while she slept, he let himself imagine she was the same person as always, that she’d never left.”

As he thinks about Cece’s mental state due to the dementia she deals with, Garrett tries to reconcile the paradoxical states of feeling as though Cece is both alive and present and also already deceased and no longer physically present. Knowing that she will inevitably pass away before him also causes Garrett to see parallels between Cece’s existence and Elias’s—he has kept Elias inside of him in a way that he knows he will do with Cece in the future.

“Garrett stared at the ring. It didn’t upset him as he might have expected; if anything, he was glad Charlie had kept it. The man had been through everything, he’d lost and lost, while Garrett—for no earthly reason, and against all odds—had won. He’d turned his life around completely. Married the woman of his dreams, raised a brilliant and successful daughter. He’d killed a man, then been rewarded for it. Neither of them deserved their fate, and yet this was what life had dealt them.”

This quote presents Garrett’s reaction to Charlie showing him the wedding ring given to him by Cece. That Charlie has kept it shows his continued commitment to her and his unwavering love for her. Garrett sympathizes with Charlie in this moment and feels like it is unfair that he has been rewarded for harming his friend.