Kit McDeere is the first-person narrator of the novel’s present-day events, which take place in 1983. Thirty-one-year-old Kit has spent her entire life in the coastal Maine town where she grew up, working for the past 12 as a home health care provider for a local agency. When not residing with her patients, Kit lives at home with her parents Patrick and Kathleen. Kit enjoys her work, but its time commitment has made her relatively isolated; she does not have any close friends, pursue any hobbies, or travel outside her hometown. Her only social connection is to her neighbor Kenny, 11 years her junior, with whom she shares a mutually convenient casual sexual relationship.

The death of Kit’s mother six months before the beginning of the novel is the defining event of Kit’s life. Working as her mother’s caregiver, Kit was on duty when Kathleen died as the result of an opiate overdose. Although a criminal investigation and an inquest by the state health board found her innocent, Kit was suspended from her job for six months without pay. Though Kit is adamant that she did not give the pills to her mother with the intent of participating in assisted suicide, she does admit accidentally leaving the pills in her mother’s room.