Noah confesses to Adrianne that he sexually touched two six-year-old girls, Maci and Bella, during swim coaching sessions.

Adrianne invites the girls' parents to dinner, framing Noah's abuse as a shared problem for all families to address together.

The parents of Maci and Bella walk out of the dinner furious and report Noah to the police.

Police arrive at the Coates home on a Sunday morning with a warrant and take Noah from his bedroom while Adrianne weeps.

Noah is sentenced as a Type 1 juvenile sex offender and ordered to spend eighteen months at the Marsh rehabilitation facility.

Lucas refuses to allow Noah back into the family home and insists Adrianne move into a separate apartment with Noah.

Noah and Adrianne visit the courthouse, where Noah officially registers as a sex offender under the terms of his probation.

Noah comes home from school beaten and bloodied, with broken collar bones, cracked ribs, and deep gashes on his face.

Dr. Park arranges for Noah to meet Rick, a former Marsh inmate, hoping peer interaction will pull Noah out of his depression.

Noah overdoses on his prescription Percocet while Adrianne is out buying groceries, leaving the apartment floor covered in vomit.

Adrianne asks Lucas to speak privately with Noah, hoping a father's words will break through Noah's growing despair.

Adrianne finds Noah hanging from the apartment balcony railing by knotted bedsheets and calls paramedics, who intubate him at the scene.

Adrianne finds Noah's intended suicide note at home, in which he confesses he is a pedophile whose attraction will never disappear.

Noah reveals to Adrianne that during the school attack, the bullies raped him with the narrow end of a baseball bat.

Adrianne slowly administers a lethal dose of crushed medication dissolved in water to Noah, who dies peacefully as she strokes his hair.

Saving Noah follows Adrianne Coates as her fifteen-year-old son Noah confesses to molesting two young girls and is sentenced to eighteen months in a juvenile rehabilitation facility. After Noah's release, Lucas refuses to allow him back into the family home, forcing Adrianne and Noah into a separate apartment where Noah is relentlessly bullied. The violence against Noah escalates until he is severely beaten at school, and a well-meaning attempt to connect him with a former rehabilitation peer backfires disastrously, triggering a drug overdose. A private conversation with his cold and distant father pushes Noah to attempt death by suicide a second time, leading to his hospitalization and the discovery of his intended farewell note. The note forces Adrianne to confront the full truth about her son's pedophilia, and after Noah discloses the sexual violence inflicted on him during the school attack, she makes the devastating decision to help him die. The novel ends with Adrianne administering a lethal dose of medication and holding Noah as he passes away peacefully.

The headline events that destroy and end Noah's life.

Noah is released after one night in juvenile holding and Adrianne sends him to school, where he is beaten until he bleeds.

After 'baby raper' is spray-painted across their front door, the Coates sell their house and move from Buffalo Grove to Dolton.

Adrianne moves into a small apartment, painting the walls white and arranging Noah's swim trophies on a shelf before his release.

After Katie innocently says she does not mind if Noah touches her privately, a horrified Adrianne phones Lucas to request an overnight visit.

Adrianne allows Katie to sleep over against Lucas's rules, and the three watch movies together while Noah tells Katie a bedtime story.

Lucas threatens Adrianne with a sole custody lawsuit over Katie if she ever allows another unauthorized sleepover.

Students at Noah's new school discover his sex offender status and a footballer calls him a 'sick perv,' worsening his daily bullying.

Noah's heart stops in the airlift helicopter after his second suicide attempt, and paramedics shock him twice before he revives.

Adrianne calls Dr. Park after finding the suicide note, and Dr. Park explains that Noah has a rare case of true adolescent pedophilia.

Noah discloses to Adrianne that Lucas told him to run away to California and never contact the family again.

Dr. Phillips tells Adrianne that Noah shows all signs of psychiatric improvement and cannot legally be held in the ward any longer.

Noah is discharged from the hospital and cooks chicken with Adrianne, laughing and appearing more alive than he has in months.

Adrianne convinces her doctor to prescribe Seconal by falsely claiming she has developed a tolerance to regular sleeping pills.

The Coates family spends a final day together at Navy Pier, riding the Ferris wheel and combing the beach for shells.

Lucas confesses in his final interlude that he is relieved Noah is dead and can now return to pretending he is normal.

While the main plot follows Noah's legal and psychological collapse, the surrounding family story is just as devastating. After a brief release from holding, Noah is sent back to school and beaten before the family is run out of their neighborhood, forced to relocate to a smaller home in Dolton. Noah's release from Marsh brings small moments of warmth alongside growing crisis, including a secret sleepover with Katie that leads to Lucas threatening Adrianne with a custody battle. As Noah's depression deepens after his second suicide attempt, Adrianne navigates a healthcare system that refuses to hold him and a husband who offers only cold silence. She takes matters into her own hands, obtaining lethal medication under false pretenses and planning a final family day at Navy Pier. The pool closes with Lucas's chilling final interlude, in which he confesses he is relieved that his son is dead and can now return to pretending he is normal.

The secondary moments that shaped the Coates family's unraveling.

Noah quits coaching younger swimmers mid-summer, grows morose and withdrawn, then finally breaks down and confesses his actions to Adrianne.

At Noah's arraignment, the judge adjudicates Noah as a juvenile rather than granting the opposing lawyer's request to try him as an adult.

Adrianne's alliance with Dr. Park fractures when Dr. Park implies Noah may have a subconscious ulterior motive for wanting to write to his victims.

Lucas installs a new lock on Katie's bedroom door the moment Adrianne tells him of Noah's offense and refuses to speak to Noah at all.

Clients withdraw from Lucas's accounting firm after Noah's charges become public, forcing Lucas to take a pay cut at a downtown firm.

The unnamed narrator in the interludes undergoes electroconvulsive shock therapy, with electrodes strapped to his head, hoping it will permanently change his desires.

Adrianne discovers that someone has created a Facebook page calling Noah a 'Baby Raper,' with hundreds of hateful comments posted publicly.

Lucas and Adrianne argue bitterly at her apartment, with Lucas insisting he alone understands that Noah's attraction to children will never disappear.

During his meeting with Rick, Noah sees photos of Rick's girlfriend and realizes he can never lead a socially normal life like Rick.

Noah admits to Adrianne that he has been faking his psychiatric recovery so he can be discharged and attempt suicide again.

Adrianne tells Noah she read his suicide note and loves him unconditionally, and Noah finally meets her eyes and begins sobbing in her arms.

Adrianne decides to help Noah die after he reveals the full extent of the sexual violence inflicted on him during the school attack.

Noah hands Adrianne two sealed letters addressed to Katie and to Lucas, instructing her to deliver them only after his death.

The final interlude reveals that Lucas is the interludes' narrator — a man who molested his cousins as a teenager and was sent to a reform home.

One year after Noah's death, Adrianne returns to her Christian faith and prays she will one day be reunited with Noah in heaven.

Beneath the surface of the Coates family crisis runs a current of hidden truths and pivotal choices that shape every outcome. Noah's withdrawal from coaching and eventual confession sets off a legal process in which the judge's decision to try him as a juvenile rather than an adult marks an early crossroads. The interludes gradually reveal that the unnamed narrator in a past reform home is undergoing electroconvulsive shock therapy and struggling with desires he cannot extinguish — clues that slowly point away from Noah and toward Lucas. After Noah's second suicide attempt, a series of confrontations between Adrianne and Noah strips away every remaining layer of denial, culminating in Noah's confession about the rape and Adrianne's irreversible decision to help him die. The pool closes with the novel's two defining revelations: the final interlude's disclosure that Lucas himself is a pedophile who molested his cousins and was sent to a reform home, and Adrianne's turn back to God one year after Noah's death, hoping for a reunion in the afterlife.