“I tried to sleep but couldn’t. I felt leaden with dread. […] I could not place what had happened with what I knew of my husband, a kind and mild man, a devoted husband and father. I hadn’t drawn the curtains, so I saw the sun rise over the lake. I could tell it would be a beautiful day, crisp and sunny.”

Burden uses descriptive and figurative language to capture How Betrayal Affects Identity and Perception, one of the memoir’s primary themes. She describes her dread as “leaden,” a weight that keeps her moored in her bed. Her physical immobilization contrasts with the pleasant image of the sun rising “over the lake” and Burden’s anticipation of a “beautiful day, crisp and sunny,” thus underscoring her physical and emotional isolation in the wake of James’s abandonment.

“While he refused to talk to me on the phone, he sent one clear message by text: he planned to tell people that our separation was amicable, a joint decision. He said it would be better, for my own well-being, to say that I had wanted it too. He assumed I would agree to this false narrative. His expectation made sense. In most things, for twenty years, I had deferred to him. I believed in his wisdom, that he knew the right answer.”

James’s revisionist take on the separation introduces the theme of Male Entitlement and Domestic Power. Although he had an affair with another woman, abruptly left Burden without explanation, refused to be a part of the children’s lives, and stopped communicating with her by phone, he felt justified in dictating how they would represent their story to others. His behavior disempowered Burden; despite leaving, he demanded to continue as the proverbial “man of the family,” with the right to control Burden and her version of reality.

“When I opened the document and scrolled to the last page, I stopped at the sight of my own name. My signature looked innocent and hopeful, in blue ink and careful script, dated five days before our wedding.”

Burden’s experience reading her and James’s prenuptial agreement for the first time in over 20 years forced her to confront her past self. She felt embarrassed and upset seeing her signature on the document, which was indicative of her naivete. She mocks her handwriting as “innocent and hopeful,” disparaging her past self for believing so strongly in James and their love.

“As I stood in his doorway, looking at his profile, his skin beginning to drain of color, I was not yet conscious of all that he would miss—weddings, grandchildren, growing old with Susan. All I could feel was the horror of death, the shock of it, the sensation of being completely unprepared.”

Burden’s response to her father’s sudden death foreshadows her response to James’s abandonment. In both cases, Burden was so stunned by shocking heartbreak that she couldn’t reflect on the past or imagine the future. Heartbreak of any kind, the passage implies, has the power to disrupt one’s identity and reality.

“He was ambitious about a career and making a living in a way my father, as someone with inherited money, never was. And James was calm and even-tempered, never moody. His voice was always gentle. If you had asked me to describe him then, I would have used the word steady.”

Burden’s description of James at the start of their relationship explains her attraction. As a timid person, Burden appreciated James’s ambition and steadiness. She felt that she could rely on him because he was assertive and confident while also being “gentle” and “calm.” She compares him positively to her father, as she hoped that unlike her family of origin, her family with James would be steadfast and reliable.

“Were there red flags? The subtle or not subtle warnings I should have seen before we married, the ones people ask me about now […] Maybe the untold tale of his father. But these felt like stories of a rebellious boy becoming a responsible man; the normal mysteries of a three-dimensional human being. There is nothing I look back on now and say, How could I have missed that?”

Burden’s internal monologue affects a searching, self-questioning tone. In the wake of James’s betrayal and abandonment, Burden was so unmoored that she did everything in her power to make sense of what happened. In mining her relationship history, she sought answers to what felt inexplicable. The passage links Burden’s confusion with her conviction that her marriage was indeed based on love. The dichotomy complicates her personal journey over the course of the memoir.

“When we closed, I listed my name and James’s name as joint owners, even though he had not contributed to the purchase. I was happy to be able to do it. It felt like an offering to him, to our marriage, to the family we were going to create. And I thought that was what you did when you were married—share everything.”

Burden’s decision to put the house in both her and James’s names captures her hopeful and trusting nature. Burden loved James and did not want to withhold anything from him, ultimately using her entire trust fund to buy their two properties. Rather than blaming her ignorance or naivety, this passage underscores Burden’s pure-hearted nature. Her impulse to “share everything” contrasts sharply with James’s later decisions to withhold all his money from Burden and the children and to demand a share of the houses.

“He didn’t like the mundane tasks of taking care of kids and often said, with some humor, ‘I don’t do bath, bed, or homework.’ And he didn’t. Work came first, always. I knew other husbands like this, working seven days a week, but James seemed to be one extra degree of hardworking, one more turn on the dial of work obsessed. And I never forced him to engage or help.”

James’s unwillingness to participate in parenting the children foreshadows his lack of interest in them years later. Burden describes James’s absentee fatherhood from “the mundane tasks of taking care of kids” in a matter-of-fact, unemotional way. She also owns her part in the dynamic, never having insisted on James’s participation. This was the traditionally gendered home life that she and James created together.

“I yearned, deeply, for a normal family, a stay-at-home mother, a lively household with many kids, a life with no divorces, no mean nannies, no split time, no loneliness. So, I became what I’d always wanted for myself: a mother who stood in the schoolyard, day after day, waiting for her kids, with chocolate chip cookies in her hand.”

Burden’s reflections on her parents’ relationship and her early childhood experiences provide insight into her own marriage. Burden was grateful for Carter’s, Amanda’s, and Susan’s love but deeply longed for “a normal family” and “a stay-at-home mother.” Burden embraced conservative heterosexual norms because she wanted to give her children what she felt her parents could not give to her. She became the parent she’d always wanted, a decision that she had believed in but that James would later disparage during their divorce proceedings.

“He designed a Meadowpath sign—navy and white, a wide V in the right corner to symbolize an osprey—and used an electric drill to secure it to our gate. The name became our most prized word. We used it for email addresses, streaming passwords, stationery. It symbolized everything we had built together—home, family, security, love.”

Burden wants James’s decisions to name the Martha’s Vineyard property and to hang the Meadowpath sign to convey his investment in their home life. The image of James erecting the sign with a drill shows him committing to the family by adding to the permanence of this space.

“I wonder now, Did I make up the love story, the tale of our commitment to each other, carrying it around under my arm like a prized book? I’d believed in that narrative, referring to it daily in my mind, telling others the story of how we met, how long we’d been married, confident that I was someone who had experienced true love, who had a marriage that was strong and happy.”

Burden’s internal monologue captures how betrayal affects identity and perception. Instead of asserting that James was solely to blame, Burden questions herself. She couldn’t explain James’s behaviors, so she interrogated her version of reality. James acted out of character, convincing Burden that she’d never really known him; if that was true, could she really trust her understanding of any of their experiences?

“I’d read that the best way to handle a heartbreak of any kind was to move through it, rather than around it. […] I think I moved around my father’s death, unable to understand or face it completely. But in my long, solitary loops, I felt like I was literally walking through my sadness, the muck of it, day after day. I got to know it. I screamed in the woods. I cried openly on the deserted sidewalks of Vineyard Haven. I lay down on the cold sand of the beach, midwalk, in anguish.”

The recurring image of Burden taking long walks during the 2020 COVID-19 restrictions conveys her steady work to heal herself. Although devastated by her husband’s betrayal, Burden refused to give up. She remained overcome by sorrow, screaming and crying in the woods, but she persisted. Her physical mobility represents her attempts to emotionally process and move through her sorrow.

“He said, ‘I want you to understand that what James is doing is wrong. The way he left you without explanation is wrong. Walking out on his family during a global pandemic is wrong. The way he is treating you now is wrong. If he tells you it isn’t, if anyone tells you it isn’t, don’t believe them.’”

Burden’s friend’s husband supported her perspective on her situation by validating her side of the story. In the weeks and months following James’s departure, Burden frequently questioned what had happened, who was in the wrong, and what she could have done to prevent James from leaving. Here, the external assurance that James’s behavior was both odd and unacceptable offered Burden solace and comfort.

“We laughed that night as we played with the numbers, as we lifted and lowered the head and foot of the mattress, like a hospital bed, as if we were suddenly eighty. What was he thinking then, as we laughed together? Was he already having the affair? Did he know he was going to leave me two months later? Why would he buy such an expensive bed, one clearly designed for two people to share?”

In New York City, Burden lay in the Sleep Number bed that James had bought two months prior. The bed symbolizes the life she thought she and James had built, but her happy memories of the mattress failed to align with her new reality. The image of them laughing creates a melancholic tone that echoes Burden’s emotional experience.

“The male became more active in his search for food; it seemed like he was fishing all day long. He flew above us before he dove into the lake; a fast, vertical dive, shifting at the last moment with his legs and head forward. He emerged from the water carrying a small fish, an unmistakable silhouette in the sky. He delivered it to the nest, a gift to the female and their babies.”

Burden’s description of the male osprey feeding the female and baby ospreys captures her longing for James to be the husband and father she thought he was. For years, Burden believed that James was like this bird: devoted to his task of caring for his family. She came to realize how severely he disappointed her and the children in keeping his promises.

“I forced myself to do my normal walk, the loop taking me through the club, now populated with members—tennis players, children on the playground, young mothers pushing strollers. I don’t know why I made myself do this; it would have been easy to cut through the woods, missing the club entirely. But I told myself I had to face it.”

Burden’s decision to return to club activities and events contributes to the novel’s theme of Reconstructing Life After Abandonment and Loss. Burden admits that she wanted to lie low, away from all social activity, out of shame and fear. Her decision to do the opposite of her instincts conveys her bravery. She forced herself to reclaim her life in the wake of James’s abandonment.

“It felt like my heart was seizing again, as it had on the dirt road. I could be cast out? I said, ‘I don’t understand. He’s in New York. He’s having an affair. I’m here with the kids. Why wouldn’t it be me?’ I was sure that if the situations were reversed, if I had walked out on my family during a pandemic, if I was having an affair, there would be no conversation about who would remain a member.”

The way the country-club members treated Burden after the separation underscores the conservative gender scripts that defined this social milieu. Burden had to accept that James could retain his membership, expelling her from the club—a rule that highlights the theme of male entitlement and domestic power. James faced few repercussions for his actions.

“I didn’t do any of this when James was there, and I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t left. I was always wary of a crowd, of things getting out of control, of messes. I had been brittle. But in my new state, I loved it. It made me feel good, all that happiness and noise and chaos.”

The longer Burden was apart from James, the more she could find herself on her own terms. In this passage, she reflects on her newly permissive parenting style. Letting her daughters invite their friends over is something she “wouldn’t have done” in the past. Without James, Burden located a more relaxed version of herself—a person she’d forgotten about and whom she felt proud to be.

“Is he trying to help me? Telling me this so I can protect myself? Or is it a threat, delivered on behalf of James, to settle quickly or spend the next years of my life in litigation, getting crushed? Or is he just sharing facts that I should take in stride, like a man?”

Burden’s interaction with James’s tennis friend at the dinner party threatened to destabilize her. Her harried internal monologue shows how terrified she was that James would fight her in court. The string of questions creates an anxious, worried tone that echoes Burden’s state of mind. As a woman divorcing a wealthy, powerful financier, she felt powerless.

“Looking back on those early days of writing, when I think of myself sitting at my desk, I see a woman stripped of the soft layers built up over twenty years of marriage—her trust in her husband, the comfort of their life together, the way their marriage placed her in the world. Without the layers, the padding, the woman at the desk can feel things, can see things. She has a way in.”

Burden’s description of her return to writing contributes to the theme of reconstructing life after abandonment and loss. She was unmoored by James’s departure, but writing allowed her to tell her story and helped her see herself in a new light. She uses a metaphor of armor and protection though words like “stripped,” “comfort,” “layers,” and “padding” to enact the emotional healing that writing helped her achieve.

“Anna continued, ‘I know you had everything you wanted. I know you loved him, and you loved your marriage, your family. But you are yourself again, more like the Belle I knew in 1985.’”

Anna’s honesty compelled Burden to own how she’d changed since James left her. Burden was initially hurt at Anna saying that she liked her better without James, but Anna’s words provided perspective on Burden’s past and present identity. Anna, who’d known Burden for decades, knew when she was acting and feeling like herself. The separation freed Burden to rediscover a more youthful, inhibited identity.

“I had put myself here, one decision at a time. I agreed to change the prenup, dismissing legal advice. I put both our names on the deeds. I chose not to be involved in our financial life. I failed to make sure our prenup was extinguished. I failed to think about what would happen if our marriage ended. But I also tried to have compassion for the woman I was, agreeing to all of it, trusting my husband. I did it for love. There is nothing shameful about that.”

Burden’s internal monologue captures her work to reconcile her past and present selves. On the one hand, she wanted to take responsibility for the decisions she made in her marriage that led to her current legal, relational, and financial circumstances. On the other hand, she extended “compassion” to the young, hopeful woman she used to be. Holding these iterations of herself in balance shows Burden’s growth journey.

“I felt a rush of something—not quite tenderness, but an understanding. James’s need to protect himself existed long before he had met me […] If what happened in our divorce was vengeance, it was an existential vengeance, not a personal one. It had very little to do with me. And it existed on another plane from our love story.”

Burden’s reflections on her ex-husband’s past and present lives have helped her overcome her anger and bitterness. She still feels wounded by James’s inexplicable behaviors, but she has come to terms with his dichotomies and fallibility. In extending grace to him—and the pain he experienced as a young person—Burden further humanizes herself.