Norah Henry dreams of searching for something she has lost but awakens to the sound of her newborn son crying. She immediately puts him to her breast and he is content; she is almost content.

Although David cried immediately over the loss of their daughter (a blue baby, he had explained, as tears ran down his face), she did not. Her memories were blurry, but the infant in her arms was perfect and would be more than enough. As they were leaving the clinic, Norah asks to see her daughter, but David tells her she cannot see her. He explains she was buried on a colleague’s family farm and they can visit in the spring. Norah did not demur; it was 1964, and a wife’s deference to her husband was complete. She was glad, in a way, that David took care of everything. Now, though, she dreams every night of lost things.

Norah’s twenty-year-old sister, Bree, is staying with them, and she is so self-confident and assured that Norah often feels like the younger sibling. As a junior in high school, Brigitte ran away with a pharmacist twice her age, leaving the scandal behind her. The marriage ended “soon and badly,” as predicted, but Brigitte had come home unashamed and unchastened. She changed her name to “Bree” because it sounded carefree, enrolled in university, and continued with her life. Their mother was mortified and moved away, thankful to have at least one “proper girl.” Norah was angry that her sister had escaped without being tainted by the scandal—and she “wished desperately that she’d done it first.” The wildest thing she had ever done was marry David in such a whirlwind manner. Norah was thankful for her “modern” sister because Bree helped her gather information about breastfeeding, something seen as taboo and somehow depraved in 1964.

Now Bree is the only one Norah can talk to about things that matter to her. David is working all the time, and Norah feels others do not understand. They feel she should be content to have one healthy baby; there is no room for her to grieve for the child she lost. Norah just wishes she had been able to touch her, to see her just once, and her sister understands. Norah also wonders if her son will grow up to feel the loss of “his short life’s close companion.”

Friends come to visit and Norah finds she is resentful about their intrusion. One of them cheerfully announces that an acquaintance delivered a healthy baby girl just the night before, and the room grows silent. The ladies give her their gifts. One older woman, Flora, presents Norah with a soft package, and the new mother is hopeful at last. Flora knits blankets for every new baby in the church, and she had been convinced Norah was carrying twins. Norah is now hopeful that at last someone will acknowledge the existence of her daughter, but there is only one blanket. She demands to know where the blanket Flora made for her little girl is and begins crying. Norah reminds them her daughter’s name was Phoebe and wants “somebody to say her name.” The women crowd around trying to comfort her, but her tears continue. It has only been three days, and the women try to understand the complex emotions of their friend.

Bree suggests that Norah plan the memorial service she has talked about, but Norah expresses David’s view that she should just concentrate on the baby she has. Ever the feminist, Bree reminds her that not everything David says or does is right, and...