Benjamin Quince notices Jack Baker's Polaroid photographs at an art exhibition and invites Jack to live and work in an old factory building.

A young man and a young woman in facing apartment buildings secretly watch each other through their windows without ever speaking.

Jack invites Elizabeth Augustine to leave the Empty Bottle bar with him after finishing his photography assignment there.

Jack and Elizabeth talk through the night at a diner about their families and dreams, and Elizabeth invites Jack into her apartment.

Jack's photography show earns a write-up in the Chicago Tribune, briefly establishing him as an up-and-coming artist.

Jack and Elizabeth marry, put down roots in Chicago, and have a son they name Toby.

Jack and Elizabeth purchase a condo unit in the Shipworks building being renovated by their old friend Benjamin Quince.

During a virtual reality tour of their unbuilt condo, Elizabeth reveals her design plan includes two separate master bedrooms.

Elizabeth gives Brandie placebo love pills from the Wellness company, hoping Brandie's power as a PTA leader will protect Toby's school enrollment.

Jack and Elizabeth attend Kate and Kyle's sex party, where the hosts separate them and ask each pointed questions about their marriage.

Elizabeth steps outside the sex party for air and is immediately confronted by Brandie and a group of Community Corps protesters.

Brandie confronts Elizabeth about attending the sex party; Elizabeth retaliates by revealing the love pills were placebos, and Brandie escalates her protests.

Jack and Elizabeth sleep in separate bedrooms and grow increasingly distant as Community Corps intensifies its campaign against the Shipworks building.

Jack's father dies of cancer and Jack travels to Kansas for the funeral, returning to his hometown for the first time in decades.

Benjamin sets the Shipworks building on fire to collect insurance money; Elizabeth rushes there and finds Jack standing outside watching it burn.

Jack Baker and Elizabeth Augustine meet in 1990s Chicago through the bohemian art scene and quickly fall into a deep romantic connection, vowing to live unconventional lives together. They marry, settle permanently in Chicago, and raise a son named Toby, but two decades later their bond has grown cold and strained. Their purchase of a luxury condo managed by old friend Benjamin Quince exposes just how differently they now see their future, and Elizabeth's secret use of placebo love pills to manipulate their social circle deepens the couple's drift. A disastrous double date with open-marriage couple Kate and Kyle leads Jack and Elizabeth to a sex party where their disconnection becomes undeniable, and a confrontation with protester Brandie ignites a chain of consequences that threatens both their marriage and their investment. Jack ultimately travels to Kansas after his father's death, and upon returning tells Elizabeth he wants to separate — just as Benjamin, facing financial ruin, sets the Shipworks building on fire and Elizabeth rushes there to find Jack watching the flames.

Jack and Elizabeth's love story and unraveling marriage.

Jack's mother discovers the art posters Evelyn gave him displayed in his bedroom and tears them down, warning him never to pursue art.

Evelyn Baker is killed when a prairie burn conducted at night spreads to the field where she is painting.

Jack's mother accuses Jack of deliberately directing Evelyn to the burning field out of jealousy over how much their parents loved her.

Elizabeth's father forces her to measure every parking spot in a mall lot and uses the measurements to win a class action lawsuit.

Elizabeth meets Dr. Sanborne, who subtly tests her behavior using a hidden bleach smell and then recruits her for a love simulation study.

Elizabeth performs the love simulation experiment on Jack without his knowledge during one of their first dates together.

Jack photographs pornography images on a computer screen as a private act; his professor discovers the photos and declares them a work of genius.

Jack attends his university's mandatory Onboarding and learns his Impact Algorithm score — based on social media presence — values him at thirteen dollars.

Toby throws a tablet-related tantrum at a school playdate, and Brandie calms him with ease after Elizabeth's repeated attempts fail.

Elizabeth conducts a delayed-gratification experiment on Toby using apple turnovers; he eats the turnover immediately each of the three times she tries.

Elizabeth attends Brandie's Community Corp meeting and slips away to discover a hidden room covered in photos of couples.

Kate and Kyle describe their open marriage to Jack and Elizabeth at a cocktail bar and invite the couple to one of their sex parties.

Jack asks Benjamin at a farmer's market whether he is too vanilla, and Benjamin agrees while criticizing their old anti-corporate college mindset.

Community Corps renews its attack on the Shipworks building; Jack and Elizabeth fight until Toby interrupts to announce his parents have gone viral online.

Elizabeth reads an article debunking the marshmallow experiment's conclusions and immediately apologizes to Toby for the apple turnover test she put him through.

The novel layers present-day domestic friction with formative backstory events that explain how Jack and Elizabeth each became who they are. Jack's childhood is defined by his mother's resentment, his sister Evelyn's outsized influence, and the trauma of her death, while Elizabeth's adolescence is shaped by her father's domineering narcissism and the family's constant relocations. As college students, both find a way to belong in Chicago's art scene, with Elizabeth's secret participation in Dr. Sanborne's love simulation study leaving a lasting mark on her relationship with Jack. In the present, Elizabeth struggles to parent the difficult Toby while managing social alliances at his school, and Jack navigates a university culture obsessed with metrics that reduce his artistic worth to a dollar amount. The pool ends as Community Corps' protests consume their lives and Elizabeth confronts the psychological research she has staked so much on.

Formative moments and daily struggles behind the marriage.

Evelyn gives young Jack art prints and enthusiastically describes the Art Institute of Chicago, inspiring him to dream of leaving Kansas.

Jack photographs the lone tree growing in the field where Evelyn died and uses her landscape paintings to apply to art school in Chicago.

Elizabeth beats her father at tennis for the first time; he breaks three rackets in fury and strikes her with one of them.

Lawrence Baker sends Jack a Facebook friend request accompanied by a message saying he is deeply sorry, breaking years of complete silence.

Jack photographs Toby's artfully arranged lunch plate and shows it to Toby, who immediately eats everything — prompting Elizabeth to wonder if their marriage is a placebo.

Lawrence Baker is pulled into Facebook conspiracy content by the platform's algorithm and begins arguing with Jack about his theories every day.

Jack unfriends his father on Facebook after their arguments about conspiracy theories grow too heated and irreconcilable to continue.

Jack sees multiple desperate Facebook friend requests from his ailing father pleading to speak with him before it is too late.

While confronting Brandie, Elizabeth suddenly realizes she has spent her entire life focused on a future happiness that never actually arrives.

Jack's father formally apologizes for blaming Jack for Evelyn's death and reveals he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Jack's mother reveals that Lawrence also accused her of intentionally causing Evelyn's death — the same accusation she had directed at Jack for years.

Jack leaves his childhood home without receiving an apology from his mother and resolves that he must let Elizabeth go.

Elizabeth meets with retired Dr. Sanborne and confesses her fear that she tricked Jack into falling in love using a psychology experiment.

Dr. Sanborne consoles Elizabeth by arguing that love cannot be fully fabricated and that people are designed to constantly become new versions of themselves.

Wellness shuts down permanently after Brandie publicly exposes its placebo treatments on social media, and Elizabeth has an epiphany that she has deliberately fallen short of perfection her entire adult life to avoid outdoing her father.

Beneath the surface of Jack and Elizabeth's marriage lie a series of pivotal discoveries and emotional reckonings that gradually redefine both characters. Jack's childhood is marked by the profound turning point of Evelyn's death and his mother's accusation, which sends him toward art and away from Kansas, while Elizabeth's adolescence reaches a breaking point when her father's rage turns physically violent. A reconnection with his dying father through Facebook — warped by algorithms into a relationship of conspiracy arguments rather than reconciliation — forces Jack to confront unresolved grief when he finally returns to Kansas. Meanwhile, Elizabeth experiences a chain of revelations: about her habit of living only for the future, about her fear that she manipulated Jack into loving her, and about the perfectionism she weaponized against herself to avoid threatening her father. The pool ends with Wellness destroyed and both characters standing at the edge of an uncertain but more honest future.