Janet looks back at her life a year ago when her husband was alive. After six months of battling cancer, however, her husband Ethan had passed away. Their relationship was far from romantic, but simply tolerable. Nonetheless, their last month together was “like the honeymoon” they never took. Currently, Janet works as a bookkeeper, has no children, and prefers to live a quiet life. Her new neighbors, Sandra and Sam, greet her one day and invite themselves for coffee to Janet’s house after Janet has left her business card in their mailbox. A talkative woman who works as a therapist, Sandra compliments Janet’s house and asks her if she would like to watch her young daughter, Miranda, the next day while Miranda goes out to town.  Janet suddenly breaks from her story, and speaks directly to the reader by describing her writing process and deciding how much truth to incorporate in her narrative. Personally, Janet thinks that Sandra is the worst mom to Miranda and also suspects that Sandra is having an affair with another man whom Janet will call “Joe” for the sake of privacy. She recalls how Sandra got in a fistfight with Joe’s girlfriend once and amuses herself. Janet begins to feel interest in Sam and begins to wear nicer clothing when she goes to visit Sam and Miranda. Sandra, on the other hand, does not seem to notice and is too busy with her own affair with Joe, which she apparently thinks is a secret that Janet will help her keep. Janet reports Sandy to the ethics committee of the Connecticut Association of Family Counselors for her financial arrangements with parents, the stock information they share, and the suspicious cash she demands from her patients. Essentially, Sandra is driven to embarrassment and loses her occupational license.  Janet zooms out for a moment by talking directly to the reader again, stating that when people read about a character acting out of character, they tend to doubt the narrator. She reveals that she had a baby once, though few people seem to know. As a result, Janet finds that this story has helped her defend Miranda from Sandra’s horrid parenting.