Within Arm's Reach

Two months after the Easter party, Gracie examines her growing belly and imagines her grandmother carrying her mother and her aunts and uncles. She reveals that following Catharine’s reveal of her pregnancy, her parents were upset, her cousin Mary and uncle Ryan began praying, John and Dina whispered about Gracie being promiscuous, and Pat and several others left quietly. Gracie has mostly kept to herself and stayed in her house with Lila, who was unable to move into her apartment and chose to stay with Gracie.

Following the Easter party, Lila began sleeping with a man, whom Gracie knows. She also received a tearful call from her mother, who blames herself and has grown distant from her father and other relatives. She has mostly stayed in touch with Catharine and Grayson.

Gracie starts writing in one of the offices, where the spiteful gossip writer, Charlene, gives her a Dear Abby letter from Margaret that slut-shames her and accuses her of trying to trap Joel into marriage. Gracie attends a staff meeting, where she thinks about her frustration when she discovered that Grayson was rewriting her columns, including one in which she encouraged a girl who lost her mother to confront her grief head-on.