Sue Miller

all of these people's complicated feelings, both about Graham and then as they begin to interact with each other after the death, about each other and about each other's reactions to the death and so forth.

So it just seemed like a fascinating circle of people

Well, I also complicate things to some degree for Annie in particular.

because she discovers, or believes she's discovered, a couple of months after Graham's death, when they're having a kind of memorial party for him, essentially, that he had an affair with someone.

And so I wanted to complicate her grief greatly.

I mean, she's been just assailed by grief up to this point.

She just really doesn't know how to go on quite, and she's sort of slowly...

making her way to a kind of normal life.

Going to the dentist seems like an achievement to her at this point when she discovers that he had been unfaithful, which is something just intolerable to her.

And she moves from this grief, which she's holding onto because it makes her feel connected to him, to just rage at him.

She says to Frida at one point, you know, yes, I want him back so I can hit him and later so I can kill him.

But the other issue is, of course, that she can't tell the children about this.

She doesn't want to tell the children about it at all, the adult children.

And she discovers also that Frida, she thinks, knew about it before.

And she's very angry at Frida, too.

She just feels cornered and furious and also isolated, more isolated, because she feels she can't really talk to anyone anymore.

about it.

The children, particularly Sarah, who's around a lot more, doesn't really understand what's going on.

I wanted to complicate it by having people not being able to be fully open with each other or honest with each other.

Everybody's hiding a little something or other from the other person or someone or two of the other people.