The Mothers

“Her mother had died a month ago and she was drawn to anyone who wore their pain outwardly, the way she couldn’t. […] An inside hurt was supposed to stay inside. How strange it must be to hurt in an outside way you couldn’t hide.”

As Nadia observes Luke’s limp for the first time, this passage reveals her internal philosophy on managing grief. The contrast between her concealed “inside hurt” and Luke’s visible, “outside” pain establishes a central psychological motivation for their attraction. This passage gives context to the symbolic weight of Luke’s limp, a tangible wound that Nadia envies because her own trauma remains hidden.

“Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.”

The Mothers’ collective voice shifts from gossip to a lament born from shared experience, adding historical and emotional depth to their narration. The extended metaphor of “littlebit love” as a scant residue of honey conveys a sense of enduring dissatisfaction and unfulfilled longing. Through this sensory imagery, the author foreshadows the inadequacy of the novel’s central relationships and positions the Mothers as figures of communal wisdom.

“Grief was not a line, carrying you infinitely further from loss. You never knew when you would be sling-shot backward into its grip.”

This aphoristic statement offers a direct definition of grief’s nonlinear nature. The metaphor of being “sling-shot backward” into grief’s grip creates a violent, physical image that captures the sudden and disorienting power of trauma. This observation is central to understanding Nadia’s character, as her unprocessed grief for her mother dictates her choices and emotional state throughout the narrative.

“Every night before bed, she dug through the drawer for the pin and held it in her palm, stroking the bottom of golden feet still glinting in the dark.”

This sentence describes a private, recurring ritual that gives physical form to Nadia’s secret grief. The golden baby feet pin, a tangible object, symbolizes the child she chose not to have, whom she names Baby. The verb “dug” suggests a difficult search for something buried, mirroring the suppressed nature of her emotions, while the act itself shows how a secret can manifest as a private, obsessive penance.

“A soft death can be swallowed with Called home to be with the Lord or We’ll see her again in glory, but hard deaths get caught in the teeth like gristle. We have known hard deaths, but the difference was that Elise Turner had chosen one.”

The collective narrative voice of the Mothers uses a visceral simile to contrast spiritually palatable deaths with the indigestible reality of death by suicide. The description of a “hard death” that gets “caught in the teeth like gristle” establishes the community’s inability to process an act that defies religious platitudes. This framing reveals the Mothers’ self-awareness about the limits of their worldview and exposes a thematic tension between communal faith and the complexities of individual suffering.

“Her mother was dead, but what could be worse than knowing that your mother was alive somewhere but she wanted a man who hit her more than she wanted you?”

In this moment of anagnorisis, Nadia’s internal monologue uses a rhetorical question to juxtapose her own loss with Aubrey’s, reframing the concept of maternal abandonment. This realization suggests that emotional betrayal can be a form of loss as profound as physical death, which deepens the girls’ shared bond over their absent mothers. The quote crystallizes the novel’s argument that the pain inflicted by abandonment comes in varied and complex forms.

“Where her life ended, her mother’s life began.”

This stark paradox reveals Nadia’s attempt to reconcile her own termination of pregnancy with the grief from her mother’s death by suicide. By imagining her mother’s life beginning where her own would have ended, Nadia explores the theme of Motherhood as Both Aspiration and Burden, framing motherhood a zero-sum game of sacrifice and freedom. This thought experiment links her personal secret to her family’s tragedy, illustrating how she retroactively seeks justification for a choice that haunts her.

“At home, loss was everywhere; she could barely see past it, like trying to look out a windowpane covered in fingerprints. She would always feel trapped behind that window, between her and the rest of the world, but at least in Ann Arbor, the glass was clearer.”

A simile conveys Nadia’s experience of grief as a barrier that obscures her perception of the world. The image of a “windowpane covered in fingerprints” suggests that her past has left an indelible, messy mark on her identity, trapping her behind it. While a change in geography offers a “clearer” view, the metaphor implies that the barrier of her loss is permanent, something she can only look through, never entirely remove.

“[T]he boundaries of their relationship had suddenly moved, leaving him disoriented, like stepping into a room and feeling for where the walls had once been but instead only touching air.”

This simile articulates Luke’s disorientation after his mother’s complicity in the termination of pregnancy shatters his perception of her moral certainty. The image of “touching air” where a wall should be visualizes the collapse of the reliable structures that defined his family and worldview. The quote demonstrates how a secret can irrevocably alter the foundation of a relationship, leaving a character unmoored from their prior understanding of right and wrong.

“‘You used to be a big man,’ Carlos said. ‘You ain’t anymore. Gotta accept that. It’s okay to not be a big man. It’s enough to be a good one.’”

In the context of Luke’s physical rehabilitation, this quote marks a critical turning point in his character arc. The dialogue from his aide, Carlos, externalizes Luke’s internal conflict, forcing him to confront the loss of his identity as an athlete. This moment shifts Luke’s focus from physical prowess (“a big man”) to moral integrity (“a good one”), a central struggle that defines his journey and connects to the theme of The Lifelong Process of Forgiveness. The blunt, simple language contrasts the complexity of Luke’s emotional state, underscoring the necessity of accepting a new, humbler self.

“‘Like I could smell if a man was good or bad. Or I could jump out of my skin when he touched me.’ […] ‘I could hear him moving throughout the apartment, like a rat clicking through the pipes. I could hear him before he got to my room. And I always wondered why my mom never heard but I told myself she couldn’t. Because she didn’t have super senses.’”

Aubrey’s confession to Luke uses the metaphor of “super senses” to reframe her response to childhood sexual trauma as a superpower. This figurative language shows that her hyper-vigilance is a direct result of her abuse. The simile comparing her abuser to “a rat clicking through the pipes” conveys the man’s insidious and predatory presence. Her rationalization for her mother’s inaction highlights the psychological effects of maternal abandonment, revealing Aubrey’s deep-seated need to protect the image of her mother, even at her own expense.

“We forgot about Nadia Turner, the way any unseen person is unthought of. […] Only years later, years after we heard the rumor, have we collected the signs. […] After a secret’s been told, everyone becomes a prophet.”

This passage establishes the narrative function of the “we” of the church mothers, who act as a collective chorus. The aphoristic final sentence, “After a secret’s been told, everyone becomes a prophet,” directly addresses the theme of the corrosive power of secrets by commenting on the nature of hindsight and communal judgment. This omniscient voice shows how memory is retroactively constructed by the community to fit a new, scandalous narrative, solidifying the Mothers’ role as the story’s self-aware chroniclers.

“She had never cried in front of him and crying into the phone felt as embarrassing as if he’d been watching. She crouched on the carpet by her bed, dabbing her eyes with her tank top. ‘Maybe it hurts him to look at her,’ Shadi said. ‘It’s like she was never here. Like he never loved her.’”

Upon discovering her father has removed all photos of her deceased mother, Nadia’s emotional reaction reveals the depth of her unresolved grief. This moment exposes a vulnerability that contrasts with Nadia’s independent exterior, while Shadi’s interpretation of her father’s actions introduces the idea that forgetting can be an act of self-preservation. The scene explores the divergent ways characters cope with loss—Nadia through memory, her father through conscious efforts to forget.

“The pier was nothing but a long piece of wood that kept crumbling until it was rebuilt, and years later, she wondered if that was the point, if sometimes the glory was in rebuilding the broken thing, not the result but the process of trying.”

In a flashback, Aubrey recalls the story of the Oceanside pier, which becomes a controlling metaphor for resilience and navigating trauma. The pier’s history of being repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt mirrors her own attempts to reconstruct a life after abuse. The passage articulates a central argument of the novel: Value resides not in achieving a perfect, unbroken state, but in the continuous effort of repair. This reflection connects directly to the theme of the lifelong process of forgiveness.

“But Aubrey Evans was different. When we’d seen her crying at the altar all those years ago, she’d reminded us of ourselves. […] In her, we saw us, or us as we used to be. Girls who had felt that first spark of a slow love.”

This passage, narrated by the collective “we” of the Mothers, establishes their function as a chorus that interprets events through the lens of its own history. By seeing their younger selves in Aubrey, the Mothers project onto her a nostalgic ideal of piety and romantic purity. This act of identification positions Aubrey favorably within the community while simultaneously erasing her individual identity and trauma, defining her value solely through her reflection of their past.

“She had hoped for a release. She would go to this wedding and when she watched the two of them kiss at the altar, the part of her that was still hooked into Luke would finally give. A click, then the latch would open and she would finally be free. Instead, she felt him burrowing deeper into her.”

During Luke and Aubrey’s wedding, Nadia’s internal monologue uses a mechanical metaphor—a “hook” and a “latch”—to articulate her desire for closure and freedom. The failure of this expected release is conveyed through the visceral verb “burrowing,” which suggests an invasive, involuntary connection that defies her conscious will. The quote illustrates the theme of the lifelong process of forgiveness, showing that witnessing a formal resolution does not sever the complex, persistent ties of the past.

“‘Who you think gave you that money? You think Luke just had six hundred dollars laying around? I helped you do that vile thing and now you need to leave my son alone.’”

In this pivotal confrontation, Mrs. Sheppard’s dialogue shatters Nadia’s long-held understanding of the past by revealing her own complicity in the termination of pregnancy. The diction, particularly the phrase “vile thing,” exposes a deep-seated hypocrisy, reframing her “gift” as a transaction intended to protect her family’s reputation. This revelation exemplifies the theme of the corrosive power of secrets, as its unveiling creates a new and more profound betrayal.

“‘I watched my daddy bleed out over a laundry tub and I never felt young after that. But your mom, she had light. She smiled at me and my whole chest cracked open.’”

Spoken by Nadia’s father, this confession reveals a personal history of generational trauma that shaped his identity and his marriage. The stark juxtaposition of the violent, visceral memory of his father’s death with the tender metaphor of his love for his wife deepens his characterization, providing context for his stoicism and his profound grief, which Nadia has largely misinterpreted.

“Now they were slow and deliberate, the way hurt people loved, stretching carefully just to see how far their damaged muscles could go.”

This line describes the physical consummation of Nadia and Luke’s affair, employing a metaphor of physical rehabilitation to explain their emotional caution. Their intimacy is characterized not as an act of passion but as a tentative exploration of shared wounds, directly linking their emotional state to physical damage. The phrase “the way hurt people loved” universalizes their experience, suggesting a distinct form of love shaped by trauma and a need to test the limits of their own resilience.

“In her bed, she believed the impossible. She felt herself growing younger, her skin softer and tighter, her mind unfilling with the textbooks she’d read. Luke uncrippled, unswallowing aspirin by the palmfuls. Unloving Aubrey. He kissed Nadia and she felt untouched, their baby unforming inside of her, their lives separating.”

During her affair with Luke, Nadia retreats into a fantasy of reversing time. The author employs anaphora with the prefix “un-” to construct a litany of impossibilities, demonstrating Nadia’s desperate wish to undo the past and erase its consequences. This linguistic choice highlights her desire to rewrite history, not just for her own sake—unforming the baby—but also for Luke’s, by “uncrippling” him and unmaking his marriage, illustrating the affair’s foundation in shared regret.

“The weight of what has been lost is always heavier than what remains. She’s heard her granddaddy preach about the good shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine behind in search of the one lost sheep. But what about the flock he abandons? she wonders. Aren’t they lost now too?”

The collective voice of the Mothers uses a rhetorical question to invert the biblical parable of the lost sheep, shifting focus from the celebrated return of the one to the collateral damage of the 99. This reinterpretation functions as a thesis for the novel, questioning acts of singular focus—like Nadia’s ambition or Luke’s pursuit of her—at the expense of others. The aphorism that opens the passage establishes a tone of somber wisdom, framing the subsequent analysis of abandonment as a universal truth of grief.

“She was birthing the kept child. She had something Nadia never would, and for the first time, she felt triumphant over Nadia Turner.”

This moment marks a pivotal shift in Aubrey’s psychology, reframing her pregnancy as a victory in her complex rivalry with Nadia. The phrase “the kept child” creates a stark, deliberate contrast with Nadia’s terminated pregnancy, casting motherhood as a source of power and vindication. By defining her experience in opposition to Nadia’s, Aubrey reveals how deeply their friendship and her own identity have been shaped by the unspoken secret of the termination of pregnancy, linking directly to the theme of motherhood as both aspiration and burden.

“She wanted this baby and that was the difference: magic you wanted was a miracle, magic you didn’t want was a haunting.”

As Nadia observes a pregnant Aubrey, she formulates the novel’s central dichotomy regarding pregnancy. The antithesis between “miracle” and “haunting” articulates how the same biological event can be perceived as either a blessing or a curse, depending entirely on desire and circumstance. This insight allows Nadia to understand Aubrey not as an opposite, but as a reflection of a different choice, crystallizing the theme of motherhood as a deeply subjective experience.