43 pages • 1 hour read
In Five Years
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Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Dannie gets put on a big case at her law firm and works through the entire weekend. The managing partner who hired her, Aldridge, has become a mentor to her over the last few years. Dannie reflects on how she likes the precision and clarity required for corporate law. She thinks about how well-suited to each other’s careers she and David are. They’re okay only seeing each other in passing for long stretches of time, and she appreciates the ease of their relationship as well as the shared values. She decides to call a wedding planner first thing in the morning.
Chapter 12 Summary
Dannie and Bella meet for dinner after work. Bella says she decided not to buy the Dumbo apartment, citing its flaws, but Dannie argues for its benefits. Bella realizes that Dannie actually loves the apartment. They talk about Aaron; Dannie promises that she likes him and that he seems like a good guy. When Bella presses, Dannie tells her that she may be jealous of having to share Bella after so many years of being the most important person in her life. Dannie tells Bella that she and David have set the wedding date for December. Bella asks if Dannie loves David. Dannie emphasizes the practical aspect of their love: “We want so many of the same things, we have the same plans. It fits, you know?” (88). Bella says that she feels like she’s met her “person” in Aaron.
Chapter 13 Summary
It is July. David and Dannie meet for lunch; David says his ulterior motive was to discuss wedding planning. They are there only long enough to make some quick, general decisions about the wedding and then must rush back to work.
Chapter 14 Summary
At the end of August, Dannie, David, Bella, Aaron, and their friends Morgan and Ariel rent a house in the Hamptons, a popular summer vacation spot for wealthy and upper-middle-class New Yorkers. David, Dannie, and Morgan drive to the house together; they talk about Aaron on the trip and agree that he’s been good for Bella. After they arrive, Dannie and Aaron hang out in the kitchen briefly until Bella arrives. Seeing Bella and Aaron is difficult for Dannie, who experiences a pang at witnessing the evidence of their loving relationship.
Chapter 15 Summary
Dannie finds a dead seagull on her morning run. She takes a picture to show Bella so that they can play the gross-out game they’ve been playing since childhood. Bella reminds Dannie of the family beach house they used to go to as kids; Dannie doesn’t remember Bella ever coming there, nor many of the details about the house, such as how long they kept it after her brother’s death and whether or not the house had a blue awning. She denies all of Bella’s memories as inaccurate.
Bella tells Dannie that she thinks she’s pregnant. They go to the drugstore to buy a pregnancy test, which results in a positive indicator. They are thrilled and awed; Bella asks if Dannie thinks Aaron will be mad, but Dannie says it doesn’t matter because this is their baby.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
Dannie’s comfortable status quo is increasingly disrupted by the presence of Aaron in her life. She is attracted to him in no small part due to the intensity of their sexual encounter in the premonition, but without this aspect there likely wouldn’t have been any unusual tension between them. It charges their encounters on her side in ways that Bella, David, and Aaron can’t understand.
In her rush to avert the future she saw, Dannie presses forward with a wedding they don’t have time to plan properly. Despite this new motivation to get it done, Dannie doesn’t make the time to take even the first steps of hiring a wedding planner and selecting a venue. It’s a more obvious example of the type of foot dragging and excuse making she’s been doing for the last four and a half years. In addition, the more Bella falls in love with Aaron, the more pointed her questions to Dannie about David become and the more Dannie insists on their fundamental compatibility, though she rarely seems able to articulate things she loves about him other than how well their approaches to life fit together. It’s worth noting that, had Dannie not had the premonition, her explanation to Bella about jealousy over having to share her best friend may very well have been true.
Other than the development of the plot and the oncoming crisis of feeling that Dannie is heading towards, one of the most significant aspects of this section is Dannie and Bella’s difference in memory regarding the beach house Dannie’s family owned. Dannie’s foggy and missing memories are a significant indicator that her brother’s death was a point of trauma that has had profound and lasting effects. This type of memory loss is common in people who experience trauma—memories surrounding the event or evoking similar emotions may be difficult to access clearly or reliably. Both Bella and Dannie have given the reader additional reason to believe that the trauma has influenced Dannie’s approach to life, need to keep feeling and behavior neatly contained, and discomfort with emotions or actions that she hasn’t carefully and logically planned.
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