Finding Grace

In Chapters 6-12, Tom’s developing relationship with Grace introduces the novel’s thematic explorations of the Moral Challenges of Owning the Truth. Tom shows immediate interest in Grace when he discovers she is Henry’s egg donor. Although his close friend Annie acts as the voice of reason—imploring Tom not to violate the donation contract—Tom rejects her warnings about getting involved with Grace. Tom has been overcome by grief and sorrow ever since Honor’s and Chloe’s deaths. Four years have passed, and Tom still wonders if there will “ever come a time when everyone would stop asking him how he was. Would it be when he went from ‘single-dad widower’ back to someone’s husband’ again? Would he ever just be Tom, Henry’s father” (82)? Tom’s grief has consumed his life and co-opted his identity. Meeting and dating Grace offers him a chance to reclaim his independent sense of self and restart his life. He ignores Annie’s concern because he is desperate for an existence uninhibited by the sorrow of his past. However, this desire leads Tom directly into a moral conundrum. Dating Grace means lying to her. Tom wants a second chance at life, but he forsakes his chance “to build something on sound architecture with no secrets in the mortar” the minute he decides to hide the truth from Grace (85). He is presenting Grace with a false version of himself and reality by failing to explain their connection.

Tom’s lies of withholding complicate the novel’s explorations of Finding Love After Loss. Tom rapidly becomes attached to a potential future with Grace. She is beautiful, intelligent, kind, and introspective; she also resembles his late wife and is technically Henry’s biological mother. These aspects of her character make her appear like Tom’s ideal match. The more attached he becomes to their seemingly fated connection, the more painful the “thought of losing her [makes] him feel,” rendering him near “catatonic and alone all over again” (159). Convinced that Grace will reject him if he were to reveal the truth to her, Tom decides that “It was too big a gamble now. Maybe he didn’t need to tell Grace she was Henry’s anonymous egg donor after all” (159). Tom embraces this deception because he fears the truth will preclude his chances at love. He is terrified of encountering loss again. Honor and Chloe’s deaths threatened to undo him, and sabotaging his chances with Grace feels like a blow he would not survive. What Tom fails to acknowledge is that his inability to own the truth is tainting his relationship with Grace. The idyllic “universe of second dates and second chances” that he is exploring with Grace is a fragile illusion that will crumble if Tom doesn’t embrace honesty (159). The novel suggests that love is built on openness, vulnerability, and acknowledgement of the painful truth. Without these factors, love might not survive.

The increased number of italicized flashbacks in this excerpt enacts the Emotional Complexities of Death and Grief. Nearly every chapter begins with a narrative sequence set in the past. Because Honor is the first-person narrator, these moments represent Honor’s memories. She is deceased in the narrative present, but her presence haunts the pages of Tom’s story. Each thing he experiences in the present reminds Honor of something she and Tom experienced together in the past. Everything new to him is couched within Honor’s history. The flashbacks enact how the dead live on in the hearts, minds, and psyches of the living. Tom might not be actively remembering the same things as Honor, but her past-tense narrative sequences convey Tom’s unresolved sorrow over her death. Because Tom remains reluctant to confront and acknowledge his sustained sorrow, it lives on inside him. The author uses the temporal movements between the past and present to convey how unaddressed grief will fester inside the human heart. These passages also imply that Tom is always thinking about Honor. Grace’s resemblance to Honor only underscores this exchange between Tom’s past and present lives, between his loss and his hope. He is trying to overcome his unresolved sorrow by replicating the life he once had with Honor with Grace. This feels safer to Tom than risking openness, overcoming the past, and moving towards something newer and purer.