Chapter Five: March – Summary & Analysis

Spoiler Notice

This page contains a detailed breakdown of Chapter Five and reveals key plot points. If you haven't read this chapter yet, bookmark this page and return after finishing it.

Chapter Summary

Two days after Ash’s twenty-sixth birthday, a neatly wrapped parcel arrives for her mother, Nina. Ash brings it inside, assumes it’s a late gift for herself, then notices her mother’s name on the handwritten label. With Nina’s permission, she slices the tape. Inside is a second box—pale pink with a teal ribbon—and a small envelope. When Nina opens it, she finds a scuffed copper Zippo lighter and a note from Nick Radcliffe. The note explains he found the lighter while going through old boxes; it belonged to Paddy, her late husband. Nick had taken it home from the restaurant to keep it safe, and Paddy told him to keep it. Now Nick returns it, a piece of history.

Nina holds the lighter, tears glistening. Ash picks up the note, noticing Nick’s email address, and remarks on the beautiful wrapping. She lifts the lighter to her nose, catching the butane and burnt-metal scent her mother recalls from decades past. Nina must rush to another Zoom, but she suggests they light a fire later and watch something light. Ash takes the empty pink box to her room, intending to fill it with trinkets.

Alone, Ash gazes out at the dark sea and feels time galloping forward. She hears her mother’s weary professional voice handling the restaurants her father left behind—restaurants Nina now runs alongside a part-time job. It’s been four months and eight days since her dad died. She thinks of her younger brother Arlo, far away, living an unburdened life of friends, high pay, pub nights, and rotating girlfriends—the same carefree life Ash once had, but hers had nearly broken her.

Restless, she scrolls Hinge, but every face looks ugly and stupid. She browses unaffordable Airbnbs in European cities. Finally, she opens her camera roll, retreating through the bleak Christmas and funeral, into the summer before her life shattered, until she reaches a photo from exactly one year ago: herself laughing, mouth wide open, her arm around her father, his glass of wine and apron, that sunny smile he always wore when he was with his children. She lets the phone fall and cries.

Key Events

• Ash finds a package for her mother and discovers a second box inside.
• Nina opens the box to find a copper Zippo lighter and a note from Nick Radcliffe.
• The note reveals the lighter belonged to Paddy; Nick returns it as a sentimental keepsake.
• Ash is struck by the lighter’s weight and scent; she asks if Nick might be gay, half-joking.
• Nina, emotional, agrees she should write a thank-you but first must handle another work Zoom.
• Ash takes the pink box to her room, watches the night sky, and reflects on her stalled life.
• She compares her brother Arlo’s free, unaffected existence to her own brokenness.
• She mindlessly uses dating and travel apps before turning to old photos and breaking down.

Character Development

Ash – This chapter deepens our understanding of Ash’s grief and stagnation. She is acutely aware of the four months and eight days since her father’s death, marking time obsessively. Her observation of Nick’s careful packaging and her playful question about his sexuality show she is still capable of dry humor, but it is a thin veneer. Her internal monologue reveals envy of Arlo’s carefree life, guilt over her own earlier “formless” existence, and a profound sense of loneliness. Her scrolling through Hinge and Airbnb, then to old photos, maps a path from fantasy escape to raw confrontation with loss. Her breakdown is quiet and private—she cries alone, phone on her chest.

Nina – Though less central, Nina’s weariness is palpable. She is juggling Zoom meetings for work with the management of her late husband’s restaurants. Her visceral reaction to the lighter—tears, the memory of the scent—shows her sorrow is still close to the surface. Her suggestion to “light the fire and watch some trash” reveals a need for comfort and escape, mirroring Ash’s own coping mechanisms. She appears drained, moving from one obligation to the next, with little space to process her grief.

Arlo – Introduced solely through Ash’s reflections, Arlo appears as a foil. He has a “normal life” untouched by devastation, full of social noise and indulgence. Ash sees him as unaffected, which amplifies her isolation and suggests a family splintered by loss.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Memory and Tangible History – The Zippo lighter is a physical link to Paddy. Its weight, its scent of butane and burnt metal, triggers memories for Nina and becomes an artifact that Ash will carry forward. The pink box Ash keeps symbolizes the act of storing memories—she intends to fill it with trinkets and mementos, turning it into a personal archive of loss.

Grief and Time – Ash explicitly feels “the thud and canter of time running by.” The count of four months and eight days, the retrospective scrolling through her camera roll, and the comparison to the “girl with slightly shorter hair” all frame grief as a disorienting distortion of time. The past year feels simultaneously immediate and impossibly distant.

Isolation and Stuckness – Ash and Nina are together in the house but each carries a solitary burden. Ash’s perception of Arlo’s life “unaffected by the echoes of devastation” underscores her own isolation. Her digital consumption—dating apps, travel fantasies—is a hollow search for connection, highlighting her emotional paralysis.

Scent as Trigger – The lighter’s smell transports Nina instantly to the eighties and nineties, demonstrating how sensory details can collapse decades and revive presence. This motif underscores the book’s interest in how the past intrudes upon the present.

Why This Chapter Matters

Chapter Five serves as an intimate character study of Ash at a pivotal moment. It is the first time we see her inner world in sustained detail—her counting of days, her jealousy of Arlo’s freedom, her use of apps as emotional numbing agents. The chapter foregrounds grief not as a dramatic event but as a quiet, repetitive ache. The arrival of the lighter introduces Nick Radcliffe as a figure from the past, planting a narrative seed while also giving the family a sacred object. Ash’s final collapse signals that her coping mechanisms are failing; the facade of normalcy is cracking. This chapter slows the pace to let the reader inhabit the weight of loss, making the emotional stakes feel concrete and immediate.

Study Questions and Answers

1. What is the symbolic significance of the copper Zippo lighter? The lighter acts as more than a keepsake; it is a direct sensory connection to Paddy. Its weight, its scent, and the story of its return via Nick Radcliffe make it a vessel of memory. For Nina, it collapses time, summoning the smell of a past era. For Ash, it becomes a memento she can keep close—she examines it, inhales its residue, and will store it in the pink box. It represents what remains after death: small, imperfect objects that hold outsized emotional power.

2. How does Ash’s reflection on her brother Arlo reveal her own state of mind? Ash sees Arlo as lucky because his life is “unaffected by the echoes of devastation.” She enumerates his freedoms—high-paying job, casual romances, late nights—and contrasts them with her own paralysis. The same “freewheeling, formless starter life” that Arlo navigates effortlessly had nearly broken Ash before her father’s death. This comparison exposes her guilt, her awareness that she was already struggling, and her deep fear that she cannot move forward. Arlo becomes a mirror reflecting everything she feels she has lost: normalcy, lightness, forward motion.

3. Why does Ash cry at the end of the chapter, and what does the photo represent? Ash cries because the photograph forces her to confront the gap between who she was a year ago and who she is now. The image captures a moment before any of the bad things happened: she is laughing, arm around her father, who wears an apron and holds wine, radiating a familiar sunny smile. The photo is proof of a shattered safety, a prelapsarian past that grief has rendered unreachable. Her tears are not just for her father but for the version of herself that no longer exists.

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