Katey and her roommate Eve meet the handsome, wealthy Tinker Grey at a Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year's Eve.

Tinker takes Katey and Eve to the exclusive 21 Club, where a woman named Anne Grandyn introduces herself as his godmother.

Tinker's car is struck by a milk truck on an icy road and Eve is flung through the windshield, leaving her severely disfigured.

Unable to manage the boardinghouse stairs, Eve moves into Tinker's Beresford apartment to recover from reconstructive surgery.

Tinker calls Katey to watch over Eve for the evening, then kisses Katey before leaving for work.

Eve and Tinker return from a Florida vacation and host a dinner party at the Beresford apartment.

After a disastrous birthday dinner ends with her being sick in an alley, Katey quits her job at the law firm.

Katey forms a strategic alliance with her colleague Alley McKenna at Gotham to ensure neither of them is fired by Mason.

Wallace reveals to Katey that Tinker's father lost the family fortune and Tinker rebuilt himself from nothing.

The police knock on Katey's door and take her to a station where she bails a drunken Eve out of jail.

Eve confesses to Katey that she refused Tinker's marriage proposal and had secretly obtained an abortion in Paris.

Instead of returning home to Indiana, Eve boards a train to Los Angeles and never returns to New York.

Katey and Tinker spend a weekend together at the Wolcotts' Adirondack camp, hike to a mountaintop, and sleep together.

Katey spots Tinker and Anne behaving intimately at a restaurant, then confronts Tinker in the street and slaps him.

Tinker leaves behind the Washington maxim book and Hank's painting, departing with a farewell letter signed with his lighter's dates.

On New Year's Eve, Katey and Eve meet the charming Tinker Grey, beginning a fateful love triangle in Depression-era New York. A car accident leaves Eve disfigured and Tinker bound to her by guilt, while Katey pushes aside her feelings and focuses on climbing the social ladder through new jobs and friendships. After Eve refuses Tinker's marriage proposal, reveals a secret abortion, and abandons New York for Los Angeles, Katey and Tinker finally reunite. Their rekindled romance is shattered when Katey discovers the truth about Tinker's arrangement with Anne Grandyn, the woman who had posed as his godmother. After a painful confrontation and a period of estrangement, the two reconcile briefly before Tinker chooses to leave his constructed life behind entirely. Katey is left to build her own future with a career at Gotham magazine and, eventually, a quiet life with the man she will marry.

The rise and fall of Katey, Eve, and Tinker's intertwined lives in Depression-era New York.

Eve and Katey leave a note at the Beresford for Tinker, then blindfold him and lead him on a tour of Manhattan.

The owner of Chernoff's restaurant warns Katey that Tinker cannot belong to both her and Eve for very long.

Katey secretly meets Tinker for lunch at a diner, learns the story behind his gold lighter, and lies to Eve about it.

Before leaving New York without his daughter, Mr. Ross hands Katey an envelope containing five hundred dollars.

Tinker and Eve send postcards from Palm Beach and Key West, indicating they will not return home as planned.

At her dinner party, Eve mentions to Katey that she found diamond chandelier earrings hidden in one of Tinker's drawers.

Through a chance outing with a former boardinghouse acquaintance, Katey meets Tinker's older brother Hank at an Irish bar.

Katey runs into Anne at Belmont racetrack and Anne explains she would rather be in a wealthy man's position than his fiancée's.

Katey follows Anne to the Plaza Hotel and discovers Anne's suite is decorated in the exact same style as Tinker's apartment.

While in London with Eve, Tinker secretly purchases a copy of Walden, telling Eve he bought a city guidebook.

Katey meets the ambitious editor Mason Tate, impresses him in an impromptu interview, and accepts his offer to work on Gotham.

Wallace takes Katey shooting on Long Island and later escorts her to the Metropolitan Museum to examine antique weapons.

At Wallace's home, Katey notices a school photograph in which Tinker appears twice in the same image due to a camera trick.

After fleeing the Labor Day party at Whileaway, Katey is quietly driven home by Valentine Hollingsworth, the man she will one day marry.

Dicky tracks Katey down at St. Patrick's Cathedral and she admits to him that she is still in love with Tinker.

From their first adventures blindfolding Tinker through Manhattan to secret lunches and small lies, the three-way friendship between Katey, Eve, and Tinker is charged with unspoken tensions and hidden agendas. Encounters with Tinker's rough-edged brother Hank and the mysterious Anne Grandyn slowly reveal that nothing in Tinker's polished world is quite what it seems. As Tinker and Eve vacation in Europe and send postcards home, Katey navigates her own social ascent through Pembroke Press and the glamorous world of Mason Tate's society magazine. Wallace Wolcott, an old-money bachelor and Tinker's school friend, becomes Katey's closest companion and quietly draws her into his honest, uncomplicated world. Key discoveries pile up as subtle clues to a larger truth: unexplained diamond earrings, matching décor in Anne's hotel suite, and a secretly purchased copy of Walden. By the time Valentine Hollingsworth drives Katey home from a party, the quiet threads of her future life are already being woven together.

The hidden moments and secondary threads that quietly shape Katey's ascent through New York society.

Katey and her husband Val attend a Walker Evans photography exhibit and discover two photographs of Tinker Grey from different years.

Although Eve claims Tinker for herself at the jazz bar, both women sense that Tinker and Katey share a deeper bond.

After saying goodnight, Katey finds Tinker's gold lighter in her pocket, engraved with his initials and a birth year ending in a question mark.

While watching over Eve, Katey finds a copy of Washington's Rules of Civility in Tinker's room, inscribed to him by his mother.

Eve tells Katey to stop visiting the Beresford apartment, making clear that securing Tinker is now a matter of survival for her.

At the dinner party, Tinker's old friend Bucky cryptically remarks that Tinker has risen from the ashes like a phoenix.

Katey receives a birthday telegram from Eve, dyes her hair red, splurges on a fancy restaurant dinner, and ends up violently ill.

Katey tricks the literary editor Nathaniel Parish into hiring her by pretending to seek a job from his sworn rival.

Wallace tells Katey he has enlisted to fight in the Spanish Civil War and wants to spend his remaining time with friends and family.

Katey sees Tinker and Anne together at a restaurant and Bitsy informs her that Anne is Tinker's banker, not his godmother.

Tinker finds Hank in the rain to offer him money, but Hank punches Tinker to the ground and refuses the cash.

Anne visits Katey's apartment, reveals her own working-class origins, offers Katey the Beresford apartment for a year, and kisses her.

As Anne leaves, Katey slips the Beresford apartment key back into Anne's pocket, refusing to be purchased as Tinker was.

Mason reveals to Katey that it was Anne Grandyn, not Nathaniel Parish, who originally secured her the position at Gotham.

After reflecting on how her life has been shaped by a series of choices, Katey begins saying Tinker's name every morning again.

The novel opens with Katey in middle age, seeing photographs of Tinker at a Walker Evans exhibit that trigger the entire story's retrospective. From the first night she and Eve meet Tinker, the story is shaped by small but momentous choices: Eve claiming Tinker, Katey pocketing his lighter, and Eve forcing Katey to step aside when survival demands it. Katey's own turning points arrive through bold acts of self-reinvention, including tricking a literary editor into hiring her and befriending Wallace before he enlists and is killed abroad. The revelation that Anne is Tinker's banker and paid lover—not his godmother—shatters Katey's understanding of her own judgment and the world she has been trying to enter. Anne attempts to absorb Katey as she absorbed Tinker, but Katey refuses the offer and returns the apartment key, proving she cannot be purchased. The novel closes with Katey accepting that life is a series of choices and beginning again to say Tinker's name each morning.

The pivotal decisions and discoveries that redefine who Katey and Tinker truly are.