“A breath that has been lodged behind my ribs, maybe for years—I released it when Tremaine finally asked for the divorce. What should have felt like a slice through me instead felt like a sigh.”

The contrast between the loss and disappointment that Judah expects to feel at the end of his marriage to Tremaine and the relief that he actually feels establishes that theirs was not an all-consuming, forever kind of passion. This Prologue introduces the idea of romantic love as an ideal and establishes a model of mature parenting that will be themes throughout the novel.

“It’s not just sex Edward has been stingy with lately. It’s attention. Conversation. Interest. All the things I found unexpectedly in a few moments with a stranger, and it feels like the sun on my face after winter. So hard to turn away from that warmth when you’ve stood out in the cold.”

Soledad’s reflection after she first meets Judah at the Callahan Christmas party foreshadows that Judah will turn out to be a better romantic match for her than Edward. The image of stepping into sunlight represents the awakening that Soledad will feel when she’s with him, as well as the heat of their shared passion.

“I don’t know what is going on with Edward, and he apparently didn’t see fit to call and tell me. Everything with him feels like shaky ground right now, but some things I can count on. My daughters and my friends.”

This image of Edward being shaky ground while her friends are firm supports the book’s argument that the enduring and uplifting bonds of female friendship persist even if or when romantic love can’t be counted on. This message is also confirmed in bell hooks’s nonfiction essay collection All About Love, to which the novel makes several allusions (See: Symbols & Motifs).