Sam ingests a poisonous mushroom at summer camp, falls into a coma, and is found to have complete kidney failure.

Hannah Ainsworth is bitten by a cobra in the hotel garden; Lucien Beck rescues her and rushes her to the hospital.

Paige urges Mallory to contact world-famous musician Monk Adams to see if he is a kidney match for Sam.

At the pyramids, Hannah chooses to pursue an affair with Lucien rather than remain a monument to marital fidelity.

Mallory arrives on Winthrop Island to nanny for Monk's half-siblings, beginning a summer that draws her and Monk together.

Alistair grabs Hannah's pistol and shoots an Egyptian man during a tense confrontation near the Suez Canal.

Mallory unexpectedly runs into Monk on a secluded beach at Winthrop Island after fourteen years apart.

Monk meets Sam for the first time and staggers away after immediately recognizing the boy as his biological son.

Hannah sneaks to Lucien's hotel rooms, tells him she wants a child, and they spend the night together.

Monk presents Mallory with a paternity agreement detailing child support and visitation, and volunteers to donate a kidney to Sam.

Mallory and Paige visit the Irish convent where their mother was born and learn their grandmother was Hannah Ainsworth.

Alistair confronts Hannah, revealing he knows the baby is not his and that Lucien is an Israeli intelligence agent.

Lucien runs into the burning Cairo hotel during Black Saturday and dies in Hannah's arms after carrying her to safety.

Mr. Adams drugs and rapes Mallory the night before she and Monk were scheduled to leave Winthrop Island together.

Monk reconciles with Mallory at her Connecticut home, and Paige arrives with Kàroly — Hannah's long-lost son and their uncle.

This pool traces the two central storylines that define the novel. In 1951 Egypt, Hannah Ainsworth begins a dangerous affair with hotel manager Lucien Beck while her reckless diplomat husband grows increasingly volatile. In the present day, Mallory Dunne struggles to protect her chronically ill son Sam while keeping his famous father Monk Adams unaware of the boy's existence. The two timelines converge when Mallory and her sister Paige trace their family roots to an Irish convent and discover that Hannah was their maternal grandmother. The full weight of the secret Mallory has carried — that Monk's father drugged and raped her — is finally revealed, explaining her long silence. The story ends with both a reconciliation and a reunion, as Monk and Mallory find their way back to each other and the surviving threads of Hannah's family are brought together.

The headline events that drive Hannah's and Mallory's intertwined stories.

On her frantic drive to the hospital, Mallory hits a baby owl trapped in her windshield wipers but refuses to stop.

Paige tells Mallory that their mother was adopted from a Catholic orphanage in Ireland, raising new questions about their ancestry.

Lucien kisses the scar left by Hannah's cobra bite in his office and invites her to visit the pyramids together.

Lillian Beverley privately warns Hannah that Lucien has previously seduced other diplomats' wives staying at the hotel.

Backstage at Mo's pub, Monk tells Mallory he loves her before taking the stage to perform.

Mallory and Monk have unprotected sex on the beach, with Mallory convinced she cannot get pregnant.

Mallory's ex-boyfriend Dillon Rooney punches Monk in the face when he spots them together at Mo's pub.

Mallory's appraiser friend Luca examines the cobra bracelet and identifies it as Egyptian-made, likely crafted in the 1930s.

Hannah and Lucien check into an Alexandrian hotel together under the name Mr. and Mrs. Beck, openly living as a couple.

Lennox Lassiter arrives uninvited at Monk's estate, embraces Sam, and urges Mallory to think of her as a sister.

Paige shares DNA results revealing that she and Mallory are one-quarter Jewish, reframing their understanding of their family heritage.

Hannah finally tells Lucien her full history — the Soviets' murder of Jànos, the theft of baby Kàroly, and her captivity and torture.

Mallory confronts Lennox for screaming at the family housekeeper Grace; Grace quits her position the following day.

Sam's kidney transplant surgery is declared a success, ending years of dialysis and medical uncertainty.

Monk tells Mallory he has ended his engagement to Lennox and asks Mallory to build a life with him.

This pool captures the secondary events that give both storylines their texture and emotional depth. On Winthrop Island in 2008, Mallory and Monk's summer romance deepens through stolen moments, bold declarations of love, and the interference of a jealous ex-boyfriend. Hannah and Lucien's affair in 1950s Egypt grows more committed as they travel together and he introduces her to his hidden Jewish heritage. In the present day, a series of smaller revelations — the bracelet's Egyptian origins, an ancestry DNA test, and Lennox Lassiter's hidden cruelty — gradually shift Mallory's understanding of herself and her family. Each event nudges the larger mysteries of both timelines closer to resolution. Together they show how ordinary moments of love, warning, and discovery quietly build toward the novel's larger turning points.

The supporting moments, discoveries, and relationships that fill out both timelines.

Mallory's mother leaves the gold cobra bracelet to Mallory in her will, passing down an object whose secrets remain unknown.

Hannah recalls meeting Alistair Ainsworth at a displaced persons camp in Austria and accepting his marriage proposal, trading love for security.

Monk confesses to Mallory that she is the girl whose apparent disinterest has fueled his most heartfelt songwriting.

The morning after meeting Sam, Monk texts Lola to obtain Mallory's phone number, signaling his determination to be in his son's life.

After the Suez Canal shooting, Lucien finds Hannah alone and confesses that he has fallen in love with her.

Mallory ends her relationship with Dillon Rooney shortly after she and Monk share their first real kiss.

Hannah agrees to spy on Alistair's activities in Rome for Lucien and admits for the first time that she has killed before.

Mr. Adams warns Mallory privately that Monk has secretly dropped out of college to pursue a music career.

Monk asks Mallory to leave Winthrop Island together when her nanny work ends; they agree to depart in one week.

Mother Superior Bernadette recalls Hannah screaming as her newborn was taken and pressing the cobra bracelet into a nun's hands for the child.

Hannah spots Lucien embracing Lillian Beverley in what appears to be an intimate scene, casting sudden doubt on his true loyalties.

Paige discovers that her husband Jake is having an affair and has fathered a child with another woman.

Hannah loves Lucien but forces him to leave Cairo, believing he is unprepared for the fatherhood that comes with staying.

Mallory takes Monk's hand in his hospital room and confesses that his father drugged and raped her before she fled the island.

Sam's earlier paternity DNA test confirms that Monk is definitively Sam's biological father, putting Mallory's deepest fear permanently to rest.

This pool focuses on the choices and discoveries that alter the course of both women's lives. For Hannah, the key turning points include her decision to marry Alistair for survival rather than love, her agreement to spy against her own husband, and her agonizing choice to send Lucien away despite loving him. For Mallory, the pivotal moments center on the summer on Winthrop Island — where she and Monk fall for each other, commit to a shared future, and are then violently separated by his father. Each event in this pool marks a threshold: a line crossed, a secret broken open, or a door that cannot be closed again. The pool ends with the relief of confirmed paternity, granting Mallory the certainty she feared she might never have. Taken together, these turning points reveal how much of both women's lives hinged on a single devastating night and the love story that surrounded it.

The decisions, revelations, and emotional turning points that reshape everything.