Lucy is the second of the novel’s two dynamic protagonists. She is emotional, and her habit of showing her vulnerability makes Vivian uncomfortable. Even so, Lucy is far more laidback than Vivian. While Vivian was Hank’s “full-time” daughter in the city, Lucy feels that she was a part-time, “vacation” daughter. Hank missed most of her life milestones because he was living with Vivian and Celeste, and he didn’t provide Lucy with the same financial support that he did for Vivian. 

Lucy grew up in Fox Hill, and like Vivian, she struggled to feel accepted and loved by the often-absent Hank. As a child, she longed for the family that Vivian had and felt that Vivian took this advantage for granted. Lucy is keenly aware of the disparities in their respective upbringings and wishes that she could have enjoyed more time with Hank and benefited more from his financial and emotional support. As a result of Hank’s distance and her husband Patrick’s request for a divorce, Lucy now fears being alone, and she is willing to compromise herself in order to avoid this fate. After she learns of Hank’s death, which occurs not long after Patrick’s request for a divorce, her friend Paige says, “You don’t have to go through this alone. You have us” (127). However, Lucy fears that she is unworthy of being fully loved, as her father and Patrick have inadvertently conveyed this idea to her through their behavior. Hank limited his attention, while Patrick is now giving up on his marriage to Lucy.

Throughout the novel, Lucy learns to prioritize her emotional needs and stop seeking others’ approval in order to feel worthy of love. When Patrick is unwilling to consider moving to Portland for Lucy’s new job, she tells him that marriage is more than a piece of paper and requires work. She says, “If you can’t agree with that—can’t even consider what I want—then I don’t want you back anymore” (327). She stands up for herself and is no longer so desperate to prove her value. By the end of the novel, Lucy “knows she can handle the breakdown of a marriage, the death of a parent, a hurricane of a sister, losing her job. She can weather storm after storm” (335). Her grief—the result of her many losses over just a few months—clears her path for a new beginning.

As Hank’s wife and Vivian’s mother, Celeste is another dynamic character who develops beyond her self-centered and performative existence to become a more attentive mother and a more genuine person. She is a famous and prolific writer of romance novels, but she has always felt inadequate in her own romantic life, as Hank always kept her at a distance. Over the years, Vivian has kept her suspicions about Hank’s infidelity and his “other family” from Celeste so as not to hurt her. When Vivian meets Lucy, Celeste reveals that she has always known about Hank’s double life. However, Celeste doesn’t reveal how she found out; this information comes out later when Lucy finds a true-to-life scene in one of Celeste’s novels that points to Celeste’s knowledge of Dawn’s decades-old letter to Hank. Based on what the characters in Celeste’s novel do, Lucy suspects that Celeste kept Dawn’s final letter to Hank a secret, and she confronts Celeste with that accusation. Celeste finally admits the truth and tells both Vivian and Dawn that she hid Dawn’s letter from Hank when she was 24. She also admits that she would likely never have told them about this if Lucy hadn’t discovered her secret. Vivian grows bitter when she realizes that “Celeste let them believe she was the doting wife whose love was strong enough to withstand an affair, when actually, she’d sealed Hank’s and Dawn’s fates and, by extension, Vivian and Lucy’s, too” (360). Celeste has been a self-absorbed mother, but after Hank’s death, she tries to be a better one for Vivian.

Celeste’s life story stands as a strong example of The Ambiguous Nature of Morality. She kept Dawn and Hank apart with a selfish choice that she made at the age of 24, and then she kept this act a secret for decades, likely because she was ashamed. After a period of initial anger, Vivian realizes how lonely her mother must have been to spend her life with a man whose heart was divided and who had a “secret” daughter. Celeste made a selfish choice because she was very young and feared losing the man she loved. Although these circumstances do not absolve Celeste of responsibility, Vivian does understand her mother’s motivations. 

Celeste’s choices also demonstrate the role of Grief as a Catalyst for Personal Transformation because she changes dramatically after Hank’s death, coming to terms with his dubious choices and her own. When she expresses approval of Vivian’s dream to open her own business, Vivian “revels in her mother’s expression for an extra second” (234), relishing the unexpected affirmation. Vivian is so unaccustomed to Celeste’s attentions that she is shocked by it, and she grows even more surprised when Celeste says, “‘I realize that we don’t do this kind of thing enough—spending time together […] It’s my fault […] I haven’t been the best parent. I gave too much energy to my career and not enough to you (235). These claims represent a massive shift as Celeste resolves to be a better mother.