The story opens with Amit and Megan, a married couple staying at the Chadwick Inn. The hotel is near Amit’s high school alma mater—the private and exclusive Langford Academy, an all-male boarding school. They are to be guests of the wedding of Pam Borden. Pam is the daughter of Langford’s headmaster. Amit graduated from the school 18 years ago. Amit and Megan drove in from New York for the occasion, opting to leave their two young daughters with Megan’s parents and take a short, weekend vacation alone.

They quickly find their lodgings disappointing and inadequate. For $250 a night, Amit had chosen to stay at the hotel, which boasted amenities like a pool, tennis court, and restaurant, over the option of staying in school dormitories, empty for the summer, for $20 a person. The hotel was also next to the lake on which he had learned to canoe and kayak as an adolescent. Amit and Megan immediately take issue with several aspects of their hotel lodging—ranging from the décor and darkness of the room to the large pine tree directly in front of the window, which obstructs their view. Amit grouses about the $250/night rate, feeling ripped off. He suggests that they request a room change—an invocation of the couple’s ongoing habit while on trips. Once, upon finding a dead lizard in a Puerto Rico hotel room, they requested a room change and were upgraded to a luxury suite with a fantastical blue-green ocean view. During that stay, they had kept the window open for their entire visit, making love sideways to enjoy the view together and producing the illusion that they floated atop the sea as they slept. After surveying the surroundings at the Chadwick, Amit decides that a room change will not yield any more enticing prospects.    

Amit’s parents lived in New Delhi during his years at Langford. While they had birthed and raised Amit in America, they had abruptly decided to move to New Delhi shortly before enrolling Amit at Langford. They did not attend his graduation. Amit’s father, an accomplished and world-renowned ophthalmologist, had been asked to operate on a member of Parliament, so his parents had sent a set of Bengali acquaintances who lived in Worcester to Amit’s graduation in their stead. Amit harbored no nostalgia or fondness for his alma mater:

Apart from his loose connection with Pam, and a sweatshirt he still owned with the school’s wrinkled name across the chest, there was nothing to remind him of those years of his life. He couldn’t imagine sending his daughters to Langford—couldn’t imagine letting go of them as his parents had let go of him (86).

The couple sees a wedding party at their hotel, and Amit predicts that Pam will not have bridesmaids at her ceremony. Megan, with subtle derision, remarks that women—“even women like Pam”—do surprising things on their wedding days (88). Although Megan hadn’t complained about Amit’s acceptance of the invitation to the wedding of Pam, whom he hardly kept in contact with, Amit also feels that he has dragged Megan to an occasion populated by strangers and contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with the life they share. He also intuits that Megan feels insecure and vaguely threatened by Pam, as if Amit and Pam were former lovers. However, while it is true that Amit had once loved Pam, they were never a couple.

The wedding is to begin in an hour, and Amit is a bit upset that they cannot share a swim prior the ceremony. Megan reminds him that they have the next day to do as they please after the wedding. This is their first vacation without their daughters, Maya and Monika, since Monika’s birth three years ago. They did not take their annual cabin vacation in the Adirondacks this year because Megan’s demanding schedule as a last-year resident at Mount Sinai had precluded it. Amit’s job as the managing editor at a medical journal, which is slow in the summer, leaves him with more expendable time than Megan, and he has been the one tending to the girls’ everyday needs since early summer. This was also helpful for cutting their nanny’s hours, as the down payment on their two-story brownstone apartment has taken a sizable share of their savings.

Amit does not feel particularly motivated to wash up and “socialize with ghosts from his adolescence” (89). He feels Megan’s sense of relief and freedom in the absence of their daughters. Amit, a far more anxious parent than Megan, wishes he could share in that release, but instead finds himself worrying about Monika’s runny nose and whether Megan’s parents will remember that Maya is allergic to strawberries. He recalls a time that he became unable to enjoy a family trip to the Museum of Natural History after Monika got a piece of dried apricot in her throat and had to be aided by a bystander nurse when he found himself completely frozen: “He kept picturing the apricot piece lodged in Monika’s windpipe, and how it might have silenced her forever” (90). He also regularly finds himself tormented by visions of the everyday ways his daughters could possibly die—in a car accident, for example, or an accidental drowning at a beach. In each of these hypotheticals, he imagines himself surviving while Megan finds him culpable for their girls’ deaths. He imagines, too, a subsequent divorce, and a swift end to his entire world—he feels convinced that even one moment of fatherly negligence could send his entire life careening into catastrophe and loss. 

Suddenly, Megan announces that she cannot attend the wedding due to a heretofore undetected burn on the side of her skirt. She guesses that something—a cigarette ember perhaps—must have burned it the last time that she wore it. Amit feels a flash of irritation at her for not noticing the burn earlier. Megan has not packed a second formal outfit, and there are no nice stores in the area for her to get a new dress. They playfully make a deal that Amit must stick to her side for the entire duration of the ceremony in order to cover the burn. Amit reflects on the fact that there was a time early in their courtship when such physical closeness would have been a given.

On the way to Langford, where the ceremony is being held, Amit thinks again of his daughters. They do not bear any traces of his own dark skin and black eyes, and strangers sometimes ask if they are indeed his. Despite the remoteness that he feels from his parents, he also feels a resentment that they seemingly did not pass down any of themselves or their physical traits to his children.

As they enter school grounds, Amit finds himself embarrassed by the campus’s obvious affluence and fussy cleanliness: Megan, who comes from a working-class background, had to work very hard for everything she achieved, in contrast to the privilege that Amit enjoyed. Her upbringing had displeased Amit’s parents, and not even her stark good looks nor the fact that she was a doctor ingratiated her to them. He also recalls the way that his parents unceremoniously pulled him from public school in Winchester, Massachusetts, during ninth grade, enrolled him in Langford, and moved to New Delhi without allowing Amit a voice or a choice in the matter. This was very surprising to Amit, whose parents never harbored nostalgia for India, whose mother kept her hair short and donned saris only for special occasions, whose father maintained a liquor cabinet. Both of his parents were from rich Indian families, and while the relative wealth of America had never enchanted them, they had nonetheless left their lives in India to come to America. It was therefore a shock to Amit that they would return.

Amit would go to visit his parents in New Delhi every Christmas and summer, “staying in their flat full of servants in Chittaranjan Park, in a barren room set aside for his stays” (96). These visits only made him yearn for Calcutta, where all of his extended family lived and which he was accustomed to visiting. Four years after their move back to India, his parents moved to Houston. Amit’s father had developed a laser technique to treat astigmatism that made him an internationally sought-after physician. They had therefore since lived in Lausanne, Switzerland, and currently reside in Saudi Arabia.

When Amit arrived at Langford during his sophomore year as the school’s only Indian student, people assumed that he had been born in India. He went from being a top student at his old high school to struggling to maintain his marks. He existed outside of established social cliques. Although he confided it in no one, especially his parents, when they talked to him on the phone every weekend, “he was crippled with homesickness, missing his parents to the point where tears often filled his eyes, in those first months, without warning” (97). While he eventually adjusted and integrated into the culture of the school, he never forgave his parents for abandoning him.

While he was at Langford, he and other boys with no nearby family plans due to distance or their parents’ careers would join Pam’s family for Thanksgiving. They would gather at the Borden home, which was located on campus, along with Pam and all three of her brothers, who each attended different boarding schools. Amit and all of his schoolmates were in love with Pam, “the only girl in her family, the only girl on campus, the only girl, it had felt back then, in the world” (98). Pam was aware of their affections, but even as a young girl, understood her influence over men while simultaneously being aloof to them.

Both Amit and Pam ended up attending Colombia University. Headmaster Borden tasked Amit with looking after Pam, a duty Amit embraced wholeheartedly. Pam, for her part, suddenly decided that the two of them were friends. They quickly became close, sharing meals and study time, and Amit’s love for her grew. Pam, however, accustomed to having a coterie of men tend to her, had simply appointed Amit as her loyal friend and pseudo-guardian, and did not view him romantically. She would therefore request that he look into the boys she was interested in, and would counsel Amit about girls in exchange. She even counseled him through his first college relationship.

Amit made a pass at Pam only once: he kissed her while intoxicated at a party, and briefly laid a hand on her breast. She had let him do so, as if she had been expecting it, but had then drawn away and said, “Now we know what that feels like” (100). Amit knew then, for certain, that a romantic relationship with her was out of the question. Because he is permanently on her mailing list, he receives Christmas and birthday cards from her, as well as expensive presents for occasions such as his marriage and the birth of his daughters. Her wedding invitation had revived the familiar feeling of both elation and solicitation that the Bordens always elicited in him, “causing him to set aside whatever it was that he was doing and pay them his full attention” (100).

Amit and Pam enter the seating area, with Megan reminding him to remain on the correct side to hide her dress’s burn. They each get a spiked punch. Seeing the many children in attendance, Megan remarks that Maya and Monika would have enjoyed the occasion. Amit feels strange about drinking on campus, recalling the surreptitious parties and the way that they had to be sure to remove any traces of their drinking. He remarks that he feels old.

A familiar-looking classmate approaches them. Amit introduces him to Megan as Tim, although his name is Ted Schultz. Ted bristles at this, but continues to engage in polite conversation. Ted divulges that Pam’s betrothed, Ryan, is a television writer, and that one of the stars of the show he writes for may be in attendance. As they survey the crowd for a possible celebrity, Amit takes in the good-looking guests.

A string quartet begins to play, and the guests take their seats. Amit observes that Ryan, who looks to be in his forties, is handsome and tall. He doesn’t recognize the flower girl—who is about 12 and pretty. Pam dons a sleeveless dress with a train that is “not so much a dress as a long bedsheet that she had wrapped around herself, a careless yet perfect vision” (103). Amit realizes that she is still the most beautiful woman he has ever known. The ceremony is picturesque, and Megan still looks like a young woman, although she is 37, just like Amit.

Amit feels grateful to be able to witness the beginning of a new chapter in Pam’s life, while he, in contrast, only anticipates the continuation of his own affairs that he has become accustomed to. Ryan and Pam kiss, open-eyed and with excitement, then make their way through the crowd with the wedding party. Amit places himself, correctly, to Megan’s left in order to cover her dress’s blemish as they take their places in the receiving line. When Pam makes her way to them, he sees the traces of crows’ feet beginning to form around her eyes, although her skin is the same—unnervingly soft. Pam inquires about Amit’s daughters, and Megan tells her that they have been left at her parents’, and that she and Amit want to enjoy a “weekend of reckless freedom,” and that she wishes to stay up until 5 in the morning (105). Amit, having never heard this information before, asks her, “You do?” (105). Instead of answering him, Megan compliments, genuinely, Pam’s dress. Amit wonders if Megan does so because Pam is now married, and therefore no longer a threat. Amit and Megan also shake hands with Ryan, and Pam informs Amit that the girl he saw earlier is Ryan’s daughter, and that he has other children as well, and gives Amit a glance that says, “Can you believe I’m a stepmom?” (105). Amit is surprised that Pam would choose a man with obligations in tow when she could have anyone she wanted. Amit also fishes hopelessly old photos of his daughters when they were each newborns out of his wallet when Pam expresses that she was very much hoping to see them. She invites him to bring them to California to visit, but Amit knows that such a trip will never happen, because there is no longer any reason for him to be in Pam’s world. However, he feels a glimmer of their old connection as their conversation comes to a close.

Amit takes note of one of the campus buildings, in which he was interviewed by an ill-tempered man named Mr. Plotkin. Megan, needing to go to the bathroom, frets over her skirt before resting her purse over the singe. Amit tells her, sincerely, that she looks great. He then goes to get them each new drinks. Once in line, he recognizes a few of his old instructors, and Mr. Plotkin, whose eyes he avoids.

He sees Mr. Nagle, his old English teacher and the adviser of the school newspaper, for which Amit wrote and ultimately served as editor. Mr. Nagle was also a graduate of a high school in Winchester, which made Amit feel connected to him. Mr. Nagle immediately guesses that Amit now works for The New York Times; Amit tells him about his editorial job at the medical journal. Mr. Nagle is surprised, as Amit had never been interested in the sciences, and had wanted instead to become a journalist while he was at Langford. However, Amit knew that his parents would never have approved of such a career path, enforcing their presumption that he follow in his father’s path, and he had never had the courage to fight them on that point.

Because Amit had high competency in the sciences, he had majored in biology and gone on to medical school at Colombia. However, he only lasted two years in medical school, mostly due to the fact that he fell in love with Megan.  Lacking the ambition and motivation that she had, he found himself slacking off and missing exams, and dropped out, without informing his parents until the close of the semester. He expected Megan to break up with him as a result, but she stayed. He then applied to the journalism school at Colombia on a whim, but was rejected. At Megan’s encouragement, he began freelancing as a journalist next. However, his work at the medical journal was easier and more predictable, and he had become so accustomed to it that doing anything else was unimaginable. Mr. Nagle tells Amit that he was sure Amit would become a newspaperman and reminds him of the award the school staff won the year that Amit was editor—a prize they’ve not succeeded at winning since.

Amit, having finished his drink, realizes that he only has one left for Megan, and he goes to look for her as well as to stand in line for a new drink. The sun is setting by the time he finds Megan chatting with Ted Schultz, and Amit’s embarrassment at calling Ted the wrong name renews. Megan also informs him that there is no cell service, which has made it impossible for her to call their daughters. Amit replies that they should be able to find a pay phone later. He notices that Megan may be flirting with Ted and, in her slightly inebriated state, is no longer fussing with her dress. Instead of feeling jealous, he feels liberated from the burden of having to be by her side.

At dinner, Amit and Megan are seated with three couples, two of whom are guests of Ryan. Megan immediately falls into conversation with a man named Jared, who is an architect recently commissioned with the design of a new hospital wing. Felicia, Jared’s fiancée, begins to talk to Amit about her wedding plans. When Felicia asks, Amit informs her that he and Megan eloped and were married at City Hall eight years ago. He had been 29, and Megan 34. They had gloried in avoiding all of the complications of having a big wedding, and Amit’s parents hadn’t even met Megan at the time of their wedding. Despite their westernized ways, they had wanted Amit to marry a Bengali girl.

Felicia boldly inquires as to whether having their children was difficult. Amit, loosened by alcohol, responds truthfully. They had succeeded in conceiving Maya the first time, which had made Amit feel very potent. He reflected on the now-past phase of his life in which both of his daughters had been infants. Now, they had become more remote, beginning private lives in their rooms and inside jokes with each other. He had wanted to begin a family more than Megan had, finding the prospect of parenting exotic and exciting. It was he who had pushed for a second child, not wanting Maya to live the solitary life he’d had. Megan had acquiesced to a second pregnancy at near 40, but had elected to wear an IUD since.  

During the toasts portion, Amit notices a small grey spider, which crawls up the tablecloth and onto Jared’s sleeve. He resists the temptation to say something to him. Felicia then asks Amit if the adage that a second child is like adding two children is true. Amit haltingly tells her that after the birth of their second child, Amit’s and Megan’s marriage disappeared. Megan, suddenly cold, asks for clarification. Amit then looks over at Megan, who is still full of the animating radiance that she has had all day, and begins to feel a familiar resentment toward her. It is the resentment that he often feels after yet another day in which he has shepherded their children through their lives, without her help: “She lived in the apartment, she slept in his bed, her heart belonged to no one but him and the girls, and yet there were times Amit felt as alone as he had first been at Langford. And there had been times he hated Megan, simply for this” (114).

In the absence of alcohol, Amit would have repressed his bad feelings, but he now embraces them, feeling entitled to and justified in his resentment, despite the fact that Megan hoped to get a private practice job after her residency and thereby restore their family life. He repeats his remark to Felicia when she asks for clarification, saying that the marriage bond disappears for everyone, ultimately. Felicia, disgusted, tells him that that is an awful thing to say at a wedding. This does not soften Amit, who cogitates about the fact that since Monika’s birth, most of his and Megan’s energy had become devoted to managing things so that they could each do their individual tasks, instead of arranging to spend time together. He wishes to clarify this point with Felicia, who has already turned her attention elsewhere. Seeing that it’s 8:30, he envisions his daughters undertaking their daily bedtime rituals. He watches Felicia and Jared walk off to join the other dancing couples, and imagines that she is whispering the tale of her conversation with Amit to him, and that they are promising each other that such a thing will never happen to their marriage, even after 12 children.

Amit can see that Megan has had too much to drink. He volunteers to be the one to call the girls; Ted, winking, promises he won’t run off with Megan in the meantime. Megan makes Amit promise that they will dance until the sunrise before he goes, and he feels his love for her, the woman who would never publicly impugn their love the way he just had. He makes his way into a building, trying to find a payphone, but is singularly focused on hearing the voices of his children. He turns his path toward the hotel, forgetting that they had driven in a car to the school.

Upon his arrival in the room, however, he cannot remember the phone number of his in-laws. He then accidentally falls asleep in the hotel room and does not awaken until 11am the next morning. As he frantically sweeps the room, all signs indicate that Megan had not slept in the hotel room the previous night. Then he spots her sitting in a chair on the balcony. She states that she made it to the sunrise, although the grey skies obscured it. Amit eyes the other balcony chair, knowing that he is unwelcome to it. With an even fury in her voice, she informs him that she only worried about him for an hour, during which people searched for him and she even considered calling the police, but then suspected that he had fallen asleep at the hotel, and a phone call to the front desk had confirmed her suspicion.

Amit offers that he could not find a pay phone, and realizes that Megan has begun crying. She had not been able to find a phone either, but the headmaster had opened his office for her. She could not drive the car back to the hotel, as the keys had been in his pocket. Amit, fearful that Ted escorted her back to the room in the middle of the night, is informed that Jared and Felicia had given her a ride back. Feeling ill, he wonders if they had told her what he had said to Felicia about their marriage. Megan also tells Amit that their daughters are fine, and that she has told her parents that they will be back by afternoon. Amit reminds her of their plan to stay another night, and apologizes for abandoning her, asserting that he was unaware of how drunk he had become. Instead of responding to the apology, Megan tells him that she has already had breakfast and that he can go retrieve the car before the rain, which she uses as the reason for cutting their weekend short. She also tells him that she is too tired to drive back, and that she wants him to be adequately rested in order to do so. Instead of accusing her of always being tired, which he knows he has no quarter to do, Amit asks her to attend the wedding brunch with him. She responds by saying that she spent enough time at the wedding alone.

They soon set off in pursuit of the brunch, but cannot find it. As they look for it, Amit feels the desire to relive his school days, which were full of intellectual discovery and curiosity—the life that his daughters will soon begin. But there is no time for such pursuits now: these days he can barely even manage to read the newspaper. They finally find the room in which the brunch, already finished, had been held.

On their way out, they stop by the dormitories, in which other wedding guests had stayed. Inside a room, he notices the changes to dorm room decor that have arrived since his departure from the school. Megan remarks that they should have stayed in the dormitories, that it would actually have been more romantic than the hotel room, and that she wouldn’t have spent half the night worrying about him if they had. Megan then directly asks Amit if he ever had sex with Pam. He answers, honestly, no. She interrogates him further about the nature of their relationship, which she feels is obviously not entirely platonic. She tells her that nothing transpired between them. He feels the information, “valuable for the years he’d kept it from her, negligible now that he’d told,” fall between them (125).

Amit then pulls the window shade down and kneels in front of Megan, embracing her legs and burying his face in her jeans. As he feels her fingers work their way through his hair, he grows erect. She submits to his touch while also chastising him, telling him that they cannot have sex in a dormitory where children live. But she also returns his impassioned kisses. Amit cannot remember the last time they have had sex outside of their apartment. No one discovers them in the dorm room, despite Megan’s cries, which are loud enough to make the act obvious. Amit puts his hands over the stretch marks that snake across her hips “like inlaid streaks of mother-of-pearl that would never fade, whose brilliance spoke only of the body’s decay” (126). After he comes inside of her, he hopes that he has been forgiven. For a few moments, they linger together on the small bed, Amit’s “heart beating rapidly, vigorously, plainly striking the skin of her palm” (127).