Likeness

On a summer evening in the 1990s, Anne learns that one of her husband’s lovers is expecting his child, only a few weeks after learning that she too is pregnant. He tells her casually, as if it’s just another colorful story about his day. And the tenuous understanding between them--the careful balance of privacy and flexibility that has sustained their open marriage to date--is shattered.

Meanwhile, Sandy, the lover, works to find her own path forward through her surprise pregnancy and all the million tiny miracles and catastrophes that she must now navigate, often entirely on her own. Searching through diaries and grocery lists and seances with the dead, Sandy tries to remember just enough of her original sense of direction to make her own way home.

Samsun Knight is assistant professor in the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He is author of The Diver (Iowa, 2023) and lives in Toronto, Canada.