Content Warning: The source text and this section of the guide discuss infertility and miscarriage, the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, brief suicidal ideation, and assisted suicide. 

Two years before the story’s opening, Kate is shopping in the supermarket. She recalls how her husband would do the shopping and cooking before he got sick, and she envies another woman who seems well-groomed and put together. Kate is 38, widowed, and still wondering how other people “carry on as if the whole world has not been irrevocably shattered” (8). Her young son, Charlie, makes a mess with a can of shaving cream, pretending to be his father, and Kate begins sobbing, overwhelmed with the realization that “[t]he man [she] love[s] does not exist” (10).

In the present moment, Kate’s best friend, Grace, watches an attractive new neighbor moving in across the street. Grace is actively looking for a man to father a child with her while Kate is actively grieving. Kate’s husband has been gone for two years, and she doesn’t think she could notice other men, much less move on with someone she can only give “a half-share of [herself]” (16). Charlie, who is now five, brings a grenade out of his father’s office.