A wife struggles to make sense of her husband's sudden disappearance. A mother mourns her teenage son through the music collection he left behind. A woman shepherds her estranged parents through her brother's wedding and reflects on the year her family collapsed. A young man comes to grips with the joy - and vulnerability - of impending fatherhood. And, in the masterly opening novella, two teenagers from very different families - one a tightly knit foursome, the other a father and son who share little more than having been abandoned by the same woman - forge a sustaining friendship, only to discover the disruptive and unsettling power of sex.