A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again and has developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site Small World for posts that help solve life’s easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, calls to tell her she’s moving back east after almost 30 years away, Joyce invites Lydia to temporarily move into her Cambridge apartment. But instead of forging the bond she always dreamed of having with Lydia, their relationship frays. And they rarely discuss the loss of their sister, Eleanor, who was significantly disabled and died when she was only 10 years old. When new revelations from their family’s history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart, or course-correct their connection for the future?

Judy never intended to start wearing the dog. But when she stumbled across her son Teddy’s old baby sling during a halfhearted basement cleaning, something in her snapped. So the dog went into the sling, Judy felt connected to another living being, and she’s repeated the process every day since. Life hasn’t gone according to Judy’s plan. Her career as a children’s book author offered a glimpse of success before taking an embarrassing nose dive. Teddy, now a teenager, treats her with some combination of mortification and indifference. Her best friend is dying. And her husband, Gary, has become a pot-addled professional “snackologist” who she can’t afford to divorce.