Every Last One

Mary Beth Latham, the novel's first-person narrator, is a landscaper and mother of three in a small northeastern town. Her husband, Glen, is an ophthalmologist. Their eldest child, Ruby, is a seventeen-year-old aspiring writer. Their fourteen-year-old fraternal twins, Alex and Max, could not be more different: Alex is athletic and social, while Max is introverted, increasingly silent, and retreating from the world.

The novel's first half traces a year of domestic life as ordinary concerns gradually darken. Ruby mentions she is thinking of breaking up with Kiernan Donahue, her longtime boyfriend and playmate since kindergarten. His mother, Deborah Donahue, was once Mary Beth's closest friend. Kiernan is deeply attached not just to Ruby but to the warmth of the Latham household, having little stability at home: His parents are divorced, his father, Kevin, is unreliable, and his mother has a mental health condition.

The Donahue family carries a specific tragedy. Years earlier, Deborah's two-year-old son Declan drowned in the backyard pool. Glen heard Deborah scream and tried to revive the boy, but Declan died. Deborah asked Mary Beth to take Kiernan in temporarily; Mary Beth refused, believing he should stay with his parents. Deborah called her a fair-weather friend, and the two women were never close again, though Kiernan continued gravitating toward the Latham home.

As the year progresses, Max sinks deeper into depression. His drum teacher expresses concern, and his teachers threaten to fail him for lack of participation. Glen dismisses the worries as puberty. Meanwhile, Ruby grows increasingly uncomfortable with Kiernan's intensity. Mary Beth's friend Nancy, a biology professor and mother of Ruby's best friend Sarah, confirms that Kiernan has been pressuring Ruby to commit to nearby colleges and has bought her a ring. The prom is a disaster for Kiernan, and afterward he breaks down wailing on the Lathams' lawn, begging Mary Beth to tell Ruby she is making a mistake. Glen drives him home.

The children leave for summer programs. Max breaks his arm at camp and comes home early, withdrawing further. Kiernan reappears, befriending Max and drawing the solar system on his cast. He asks to live with the Lathams for his senior year, as his mother has moved north; Mary Beth refuses. When Ruby returns from a writing program, she discovers a silver ring of lopsided hearts on her bedside table, proof that Kiernan has been entering her room. She tells Mary Beth that Kiernan wants to freeze everything forever.

Glen and Mary Beth take Max to Dr. Pindaros Vagelos, a psychologist who specializes in twins. He reports that Max feels like a loser compared to Alex, even bringing a newspaper clipping of Alex named "Player of the Week" to show what he is up against. Both parents cry.

Kiernan's behavior escalates. At the Lathams' annual Halloween party, he arrives drunk, and Ruby storms outside to tell him to stay out of her room and that she no longer wants even friendship. On Christmas Day, a package appears at the door containing a photograph of Ruby taken with a zoom lens, the ring of hearts drawn onto her finger in India ink. Ruby reveals that the ring has appeared under her pillow multiple times and accuses her mother of knowing about Kiernan's behavior and doing nothing. Mary Beth promises that she and Glen will talk to him.

On New Year's Eve, the family attends a party at Nancy's house. Max stays home; Alex is skiing in Colorado with a friend's family. Mary Beth drinks heavily and takes a sleeping pill when they return. In the early-morning hours, Glen goes downstairs to investigate noises. Later, a figure appears in the bedroom doorway. Mary Beth thinks it is Max, but the figure strikes her in the shoulder. She loses consciousness. When she wakes, there are red-brown stains on the molding and rug. She hears voices: "they're all dead?" one asks. "Every last one," another replies (155).

Mary Beth drifts in and out of consciousness in the hospital. Her mother asks where Alex is; Mary Beth whispers "Colorado," and her mother weeps with relief. When Mary Beth surfaces into full awareness, her mother confirms: Max, Ruby, and Glen have been murdered.

Three days later, Kiernan is found hanging from a rafter in the room above the Lathams' garage, dead by suicide. He had been secretly living there for months. The walls are covered with photographs of the Latham family, spraypainted over with the words "HAPPY FAMILIES" in red, a reference to the opening of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. A letter arrives from Deborah: "You killed my son."

Mary Beth and Alex move into a guesthouse on the property of Olivia and Ted, parents of Alex's friend Ben. Mary Beth exists in a medicated fog, cooking compulsively, rarely leaving. She describes two selves: the composed public woman who nods and smiles, and the real one, which is nothing but a wound.

Over the following months, Mary Beth haltingly tries to function. She learns that Alex has gone on his own to Dr. Vagelos for therapy. She takes Alex to New York to visit her college roommate and oldest friend, Alice, and suggests they move to Brooklyn, but Alex refuses to leave his friends and school.

Nancy invites Mary Beth for lunch with Sarah and Ruby's other best friend, Rachel. The girls tearfully confess that Kiernan had been stalking Ruby for months. They urged Ruby to tell her parents, but Ruby refused, claiming her mother already knew. Mary Beth realizes this is true: She had seen the ring, the photograph, Kiernan's breakdown on the lawn, and done nothing decisive. Afterward, Nancy reveals that Deborah believes Mary Beth had an affair with Kevin Donahue and that the affair destroyed both families. Mary Beth internally acknowledges three brief encounters driven by long-suppressed desire. She leaves with the friendship fractured, consumed by the question of whether she set everything in motion.

At the high school graduation, when Ruby's name is called, the entire audience rises in a standing ovation. Mary Beth cannot stand; she drops her head into her hands and whispers Max's name.

That summer, Mary Beth discovers a hidden old farmhouse during a storm and spends months renovating it alone, finding in the physical labor a kind of therapeutic exhaustion. One evening she falls asleep without medication and dreams for the first time: The family is gathered around the dinner table, talking and smiling, but there is no food and no sound. Kiernan's chair is gone.

The novel's emotional climax comes in a joint therapy session. Alex confesses that he knew Kiernan was living in the garage. He found Kiernan there one night, and when he asked Max about it, Max told him to be cool. Alex believes that if they had told their parents, everything could have been prevented. He accuses Mary Beth of never crying, of acting as though nothing happened. She finally breaks down, wailing with her head on her knees. Dr. Vagelos explains that both have been suppressing grief to appear strong for each other. Alex reveals he talks to Max at night under the covers; Mary Beth tells him she talks to all of them, too.

In the final pages, Mary Beth settles into the farmhouse with Alex. Friends and family begin to fill the house again. She prepares for Thanksgiving with 20 guests expected. Sitting in the backyard, she calls the names of Glen, Ruby, and Max aloud into the silence. In the barn sit boxes of family belongings, including the ashes her mother placed far in the back. A box marked "Xmas Ornaments" calls to her, but she is afraid to open it. She hears Max's voice: "Don't be afraid, Mom." The novel closes with Mary Beth's declaration: "This is my life. I am trying" (299).