Michael and Melanie Gold meet James and Augusta “Gus” Harte for dinner at their standard Friday-night restaurant. Later, both sets of parents receive phone calls alerting them that their children—Chris and Emily—have been injured. All four parents rush to the hospital to learn that Emily has died by a gunshot wound and that Chris appears to be seriously injured. James presumes the teens were driving through “a bad neighborhood” (15). He and Gus are at Chris’s bedside when a detective arrives. Detective Anne-Marie Marrone believes Chris may have been the one who shot Emily.

The narrative moves back in time to when Melanie and Michael move to Bainbridge so that Michael can practice veterinary medicine for farm animals. Melanie recalls meeting him when she worked at a Tufts University library. It is through her job at Bainbridge Public Library that she befriends Gus Harte, their neighbor. Both women are in the early stages of pregnancy. The two couples have dinner, though the men do not become fast friends as the women do.

Months later, when Melanie goes into labor while Michael is working, it is Gus who takes her to the hospital.