“During the twenty years of their marriage there’d been moments—there’d been months—when he didn’t feel they had really formed a unit the way couples were supposed to. No, they’d stayed two distinct people, and not always even friends. Sometimes they’d seemed more like rivals, elbowing each other, competing over who was the better style of person. Was it Sarah, haphazard, mercurial? Was it Macon, methodical and steady?”

As Macon ruminates over his marriage with Sarah, he recognizes the glaring faults their relationship has always had. He suggests that there was something inherently wrong with how they never fully merged themselves into a single unit, illustrating the tension he felt by comparing them to rivals. The differences between Macon and Sarah’s approaches to life show the disconnect they’ve always had.

“Ethan went away to camp when he was twelve—a year ago, almost exactly. Most boys started earlier, but Macon had kept delaying it. Why have a child at all, he asked Sarah, if you were only going to ship him off to some godforsaken spot in Virginia?”

This quote explains the timeline of Ethan’s death relative to when the book takes place. It also shows that Macon is still grappling with his guilt over allowing Ethan to go to the camp where he was later killed. Macon’s grief is still fresh, barely a year old, and he feels somewhat responsible for letting up on his firm stance against summer camp.

“He thought webbed canvas suitcase stands, ceiling sprinklers, and laminated lists of fire regulations approached and slid away and approached again, over and over all the rest of his days. He thought Ethan was riding a plaster camel and calling, ‘Catch me!’ and falling, but Macon couldn’t get there in time and when he reached his arms out, Ethan was gone.”

Macon has many dreams and dream-like sequences throughout the novel, but this one illustrates how his trauma from Ethan’s death seeps into his regular thought patterns when he allows his brain to roam freely. As his mind wanders through work-related items, he is unexpectedly bombarded by the image of letting Ethan down, failing to catch him as he falls, which represents the guilt and helplessness Macon feels regarding Ethan’s death.