Tova discovers Marcellus tangled in power cords in the director's office and frees him, beginning their unlikely friendship.

Tova receives a voice message confirming that her estranged brother Lars has died.

Cameron finds a Sowell Bay class ring and a photo of his mother with an unknown man tucked inside a box of her old belongings.

Ethan drives Tova to the Charter Village retirement home, where she quietly takes an application form on the way out.

Tova falls from a damaged step stool while cleaning Marcellus's tank and injures her ankle, forcing her off work.

Cameron arrives in Sowell Bay and meets Ethan Mack, who warmly welcomes him at the Shop-Way grocery store.

Ethan uses his personal connections to help Cameron land a maintenance job at the local aquarium.

Tova returns to the aquarium and begins training Cameron in her precise cleaning methods.

Marcellus steals Cameron's driver's license from the copy machine and hides it near the sea lion statue for Tova to find.

Tova and Ethan have dinner together, but Tova accidentally uses his rare Grateful Dead concert T-shirt as a cleaning rag.

Cameron meets Simon Brinks in a hidden Seattle bar and learns that Simon is definitively not his father.

Humiliated and angry, Cameron throws the class ring into the wolf eel tank and quits his aquarium job.

Marcellus enters the dangerous wolf eel tank to retrieve the class ring, nearly dying from the effort.

Tova discovers Marcellus collapsed on the aquarium floor, revives him in a mop bucket, and carries him to the ocean.

Cameron returns to Sowell Bay and Tova reveals that her son Erik Sullivan was his father.

Tova Sullivan, a widowed elderly woman who cleans the Sowell Bay Aquarium, forms an unlikely bond with Marcellus the octopus after she frees him from a tangle of power cords. Meanwhile, Cameron Cassmore is adrift in life, and a mysterious class ring found in his mother's belongings sends him to Sowell Bay in search of the father he believes owes him a payout. Tova is sidelined by an ankle injury, opening the door for Cameron to take her job and, unknowingly, enter her orbit. Marcellus, observing them both, begins quietly maneuvering to bring them together before his lifespan runs out. The plan reaches its crisis when Cameron, humiliated after a failed confrontation with a man he believed was his father, throws the ring away and abandons Sowell Bay. Marcellus risks his life to retrieve it, Tova carries him home to the ocean, and Cameron returns just in time to learn the truth about his family.

The core story of Tova, Cameron, and Marcellus finding each other.

Marcellus explains to the reader that his species lives roughly 1,460 days and his lifespan is nearly exhausted.

The Knit-Wits notice strange suction marks on Tova's arm and she lies, saying a cleaning accident caused them.

Katie throws Cameron out of their apartment after he finally admits he has been fired yet again.

Brad announces he is leaving the band Moth Sausage because of his new baby, removing Cameron's last anchor to his old life.

Tova meets a man named Adam Wright in the park, who reveals he went to high school with Erik.

Marcellus retrieves Tova's long-lost house key from his hidden treasure collection and returns it to her during a shift.

Bartender Al tells Cameron that his mother once lived in Sowell Bay after Cameron shows him the class ring.

Cameron buys a used camper van from a contact in Seattle and drives south toward Sowell Bay.

Cameron meets Avery for the first time while pressuring realtor Jessica Snell into finding Simon Brinks's address.

Avery tells Cameron about a time she talked a distressed woman back from the edge of the pier.

Tova encourages Cameron to bond with Marcellus; Marcellus distracts Cameron and then taps him on the shoulder from behind.

Ethan finds an old bounced check from a woman named Daphne Cassmore and connects her surname to Cameron.

Tova drives several hours and pays two thousand dollars to buy Ethan a replacement concert T-shirt.

Tova signs the final paperwork selling her childhood home to a large family.

Cameron, Tova, and Ethan spend Thanksgiving together, with Avery joining them afterward for dessert.

Before Tova and Cameron's paths ever cross, each is quietly unraveling in their own way. Tova hides her friendship with Marcellus from her social group and, with Lars gone, begins seriously reckoning with the prospect of growing old alone. Cameron, newly homeless after losing his job and his girlfriend, lands at his friends' house and resolves to chase down a payday from the father he has never met. The two storylines gradually pull toward the same small town, where an ensemble of secondary characters — Ethan, Avery, the Knit-Wits, and Marcellus himself — shape what happens next. Small discoveries accumulate, old paper trails resurface, and Ethan quietly pieces together a connection between Cameron and Daphne Cassmore long before anyone else does. By the end, the loose threads of both characters' lives have been woven into a new, unexpected family that gathers around a Thanksgiving table in Sowell Bay.

The supporting moments that shape Tova's and Cameron's separate journeys.

Tova pauses at the bronze sea lion statue her son once played on as a child, revealing the quiet persistence of her grief.

Tova reflects on Erik's death being officially ruled a suicide and her lifelong conviction that he did not choose to die.

Janice gives Tova a cell phone for emergencies, and that same evening Tova fills out the Charter Village application.

Tova recalls the night Erik disappeared and the moment police appeared at her front door the following morning.

Tova visits Will's and Erik's graves and speaks aloud to Will for the first time, telling him she is selling their home.

Cameron meets Tova at the aquarium for the first time and unknowingly quotes one of Erik's favorite lines of Shakespeare.

Marcellus notices striking physical similarities between Tova and Cameron and privately concludes they must share a direct blood connection.

Adam Wright casually mentions he saw Erik board a boat the night he died, going to impress a girl.

Tova searches Erik's high school yearbook after learning his girlfriend was named Daphne and finds the surname Cassmore.

Aunt Jeanne tells Cameron his father cannot be Simon Brinks because his mother would never have hidden a living father from him.

Tova finds Cameron's driver's license near the sea lion statue and realizes his mother and her son once knew each other.

Terry confesses to Tova that he has always known about Marcellus's secret nighttime escapes from the tank.

Tova sees the class ring Marcellus retrieved and recognizes the engraved initials as belonging to her son Erik.

Avery tells Tova that the woman she once saved from the pier was rambling about a sailing accident, not a suicide.

Cameron and Tova pry open a hidden compartment in Erik's bedroom floor and find the broken Dala Horse he secretly repaired before his death.

Beneath the novel's plot runs a deeper current of revelation — moments where characters learn something that changes everything they thought they knew. Tova has carried the weight of believing Erik chose to die, a grief made more corrosive because it was never resolved. Cameron has spent his whole life convincing himself he doesn't need the family he lost. Across the story, small disclosures accumulate: a name in a yearbook, a line of Shakespeare, a physical resemblance only an octopus notices, and an offhand remark about a boat on a dark night. Each discovery nudges the truth closer to the surface without anyone yet seeing the whole picture. The final revelations — Erik's initials on the ring, and Avery's account of Daphne on the pier — arrive in rapid succession, dismantling decades of grief in a matter of hours and clearing the ground for Cameron and Tova to meet each other, at last, as family.