Handle With Care

Sean steals the newspaper from his house and reads an article about the lawsuit at a diner in another town. He is disgusted by the article, especially since it makes him look like he’s in the lawsuit just for the settlement money.

Sean drives to Marin’s house. He tells her that he wants out of the lawsuit. Marin says it will take her time to draft the paperwork, and they agree to meet in her office in 20 minutes. Sean doesn’t tell Charlotte he’s dropping out of the lawsuit.

A few days later, Sean is approached at a bar by a private investigator who works for Guy Booker. The woman gives him her business card and says that it would be in Willow’s best interest for the lawsuit to go away. Sean goes home and finds Willow in the kitchen. After tucking her into bed, he gets into bed with a surprised Charlotte and reflects on how this lawsuit is tearing apart his family.

The next day, Sean meets with Guy and the private investigator and tells them he is on their side.

Marin reviews the guidelines Maisie sent over on writing a good letter to your biological parent. She worries about what to write in the letter, afraid she’ll scare her biological mother off. She realizes that working on the O’Keefe case makes her want to find her biological mother even more, primarily so she can thank her biological mother for not terminating her.

Marin receives a letter from Guy Booker telling her that Sean is now a witness for the defense. She goes to the O’Keefe house to tell Charlotte. While she waits for Charlotte, she plays Monopoly with Willow, and she is impressed that Willow is mature and funny. Charlotte arrives home and Marin tells her that Sean is now testifying for the defense. Charlotte is shocked because she didn’t even know that Sean had dropped out of the lawsuit. In her anger, Charlotte breaks a glass, cutting her hand so badly she needs stitches. Marin takes her to the emergency room. When Marin gets home, she writes a short letter to her biological mother.

While Sean is working a detail on a construction job, Charlotte confronts him about dropping out of the lawsuit without telling her. Charlotte kicks him out of the house, telling him that he can pretend to be the hero of the family, but he’s not the one who’s with Willow daily and knows her needs.

Sean drives around that night, upset at the conversation. He thinks about his reasons for dropping out of the lawsuit and how he thinks it will allow him to refresh and change his relationship with Willow. He drives to the house and loads up all of the baked goods Charlotte and the girls made, stuffing all of his money into the cash box.

While driving home from Boston, Amelia, Charlotte, and Willow stop at a diner. They leave without eating because the waitress keeps mistaking Willow for a baby, which upsets her.

A few days later, Amelia is scheduled to get her braces off. Her orthodontist is Piper’s husband, Rob. Charlotte refuses to take her to the appointment, so Amelia runs out of the house and to Rob’s office, which is five miles away. Rob takes her braces off, giving her a bag of candy to celebrate. He notices that the enamel is wearing down on her teeth and encourages her to stop drinking so much soda. Amelia leaves, running into the bathroom to eat and throw up the candy.

In the four months following the lawsuit, Piper has become obsessed with redecorating and renovating. No longer practicing medicine, she spends most of her days at a hardware shop where she won’t run into former patients. While at the hardware shop, she buys a container of Newburyport Blue paint because it fondly reminds her of a vacation she took with Charlotte. During the vacation, Charlotte saved Piper’s life when she almost drowned during a boogie-boarding accident.

At home, Rob is frustrated that Piper was at the hardware store for so long that she forgot to take Emma to sign up for private skating lessons. Rob tells Piper that Amelia came to the office to get her braces removed, which angers Piper since she thinks it looks bad that Rob is treating the daughter of the woman suing them. Rob reminds her that it’s just her being sued, not him, and that he, unlike her, cares about his job.

The next day, Piper wakes up determined to change. She takes Emma to the skating rink, forgetting that Amelia, Charlotte, and Willow will be there too. She rushes out of the rink to her car, but Charlotte follows her. Charlotte tells her that the lawsuit isn’t about their friendship; it’s about the chance to give Willow everything she could ever possibly need. She also says that if the roles were reversed, she knows Piper would do the same thing for her daughter. Piper disagrees before driving away.

Piper rushes to Rob’s office and interrupts a new patient consultation. Rob is frustrated that Piper has most likely cost him a new client. Rob doesn’t understand why Piper is so upset about seeing Charlotte since they live in such a small town and yells at her for being so absent and focused on her DIY projects these past months. He then brings up his brother Steven, who had bipolar disorder and died by suicide. He wonders if his life would have been better if his parents had known in utero that Steven would cause them so much pain and terminated the pregnancy.

Marin hires a film crew to film a day in Willow’s life to show to the jury. They go through the day, filming Willow as she gets up, goes to school, and works out in physical therapy. Willow is frustrated that her classmates only try to be friends with her because they want to be on camera.

At physical therapy, Charlotte suggests that Molly, her therapist, does some exercises on Willow’s arm. When Willow starts to cry, Charlotte comforts her, blaming Molly for hurting her. Marin worries that Charlotte orchestrated this for the camera, especially when she asks Marin if they caught Willow’s tears on camera. Later, they notice that one of Willow’s wheelchair wheels is flat. Charlotte must decide whether or not to pay for an expensive wheel or have Willow go without the wheelchair. Willow offers Marin money for the wheel so that her mother won’t have to get rid of her.

Marin talks to Charlotte about what Willow said. The two women argue, and Marin tells her that the video will make a jury feel bad for Willow but hate Charlotte. Charlotte wonders what makes a good mother.

A recipe for Crème Caramel precedes this chapter.

Using the money from selling her baked goods, Charlotte takes Willow and Amelia to the 2008 Biennial Osteogenesis Imperfecta Convention in Omaha, Nebraska. When they arrive at the convention, Charlotte realizes they should have come years earlier since there are so many people with OI for Willow to bond with. Willow quickly makes friends and goes to play with them.

Charlotte reflects on how she earned the money to bring the girls to the convention. She’d been baking and selling baked goods with the girls and putting them at the end of the driveway. A gas station chain owner discovered them, fell in love with them, and convinced Charlotte to start baking for his gas stations.

The next morning, the family splits up to go to their various sessions. Charlotte goes to the bathroom, where she is quickly recognized for being the woman who has filed a wrongful birth suit, a story that is spreading on several OI blogs. A woman with OI tells her she’s disgusted that Charlotte would come to the convention after filing a wrongful birth suit. The other mothers in the bathroom are furious with her, and people begin to stare and talk negatively about her. Charlotte is embarrassed and runs back to her room to cry.

After crying in her room, she writes two letters. The first letter is to Sean, asking to repair their marriage. The second is to Willow, trying to explain why she filed the lawsuit and how she did it out of love and protection.

Sean goes to stay at home while Charlotte, Willow, and Amelia are at the convention because he’s spending so much money. He finds it odd to be in his home and decides to go to church to see Father Grady. He talks to Father Grady about the struggles in his marriage, and Father Grady encourages him to stay in the marriage because divorce is a sin.

Guy Booker suggests a divorce lawyer for Sean to see. After meeting with her, he goes to the hardware store, where he runs into Piper. She is working on an electrical project, and he offers to help her. He goes over to her house to fix the problem. They both apologize to each other for the lawsuit and the situation before Sean leaves.

Amelia goes into one of the sessions for teens with OI. It turns out it is a sexual education class. She notices a boy who flirted with her the day before in the room, so she decides to stay. She sits next to him and lies and tells him her name is Willow when he asks. His name is Adam. The two flirt throughout the presentation and make plans to hang out that night at the zoo.

At the zoo, Adam and Amelia sneak into the aquarium. Amelia admits her true identity, and Adam tells her he already knew since he looked her family up on the OI blogs covering the wrongful birth lawsuit. The two make out.

As Charlotte and the girls fly back from the convention, she formulates a plan to get back together with Sean. However, when she returns home, she finds a petition for divorce in the mail. Amelia sees it and is as shocked as Charlotte. Charlotte calls Marin, who gives her the name of a divorce attorney. Charlotte tells her she feels like a loser, to which Marin tells her no one wants to feel like they’re not wanted.

Later that night, Sean comes over. He and Charlotte fight and he accuses her of not listening to him and destroying the family with the wrongful birth lawsuit. They discuss how to be civil around the girls before Sean goes to sleep on the couch.

Charlotte can’t sleep as she thinks about the divorced couples she knows. She realizes that in the past when she felt like this, she would have called Piper. Out of instinct, she calls her, even though it’s late at night. Piper picks up, but Charlotte is too scared to speak. Piper eventually hangs up the phone.

The next morning, Sean lets Charlotte sleep in. He encourages her to go out while he stays with the girls. Charlotte realizes she has nowhere to go, so she goes to Marin’s office. She asks Marin for coffee, but Marin says no because they are attorney and client, not friends. Marin then tells Charlotte that she is morally opposed to her lawsuit because she is currently searching for her biological mother and, if the world worked the way Charlotte’s lawsuit says it should, Marin would have been terminated.

Later that day, Charlotte goes to a church out of town to go to confession. She tells the priest about her lawsuit and the fact that she will have to lie on the stand and say that she would have terminated her pregnancy. The priest reminds her it’s a sin to lie. Charlotte then confesses that she’s afraid she won’t be lying when she says it.

Marin prepares for jury selection. Judge Gellar, the judge who’d been on the New Hampshire Superior Court the longest, has been assigned to the case. Guy Booker and Marin spent the last few weeks creating a questionnaire to get a greater idea of who the potential jury members are. Marin is looking to have more pro-choice people on the jury; Guy wants more pro-life people.

Guy and Marin begin jury selection, striking jurors as necessary. Marin interviews a juror named Juliet Cooper, who seems upset while Marin asks her questions. Marin feels a closeness to Juliet that she cannot explain and hopes Guy won’t strike her from the jury.

While Charlotte is at court, Sean stays home with Willow. He was supposed to tell her about filing for divorce, but he never found the right time. He and Charlotte finally tell her together, and she is convinced they are divorcing because of her. They try to assuage her feelings, but she leaves to go to her room. On the way, she slips and breaks her femur.

They take Willow to the hospital, where Charlotte takes charge, advocating for Willow. Willow is given morphine, but it makes her muscles seize, which hurts her more. Charlotte and Sean must hold her down. The two spend the night at the hospital together.

Amelia visits Willow in the hospital. Amelia is extra kind to her sister, but Willow tells her that she doesn’t need to pretend to be nice since she won’t be here much longer. She says that people don’t keep broken things, and she keeps breaking parts of her body.

Charlotte hears her and tells her that she’s not going anywhere. Willow tells her that she heard her say she wished Willow hadn’t been born. Amelia listens to her mother’s response, convinced she’s hearing her wrong.

Charlotte cries in the laundry room following her conversation with Willow. She feels guilty that she just had to convince her daughter that she loved her. Sean comes in, and the two have sex, feeling reconnected by the teamwork they showed in taking care of Willow.

The next day, Charlotte prepares for court. Sean gets dressed, too, leading Charlotte to believe he’s coming to support her. She is disappointed when he tells her he has to meet with Guy Booker. Sean offers to make pancakes, but Charlotte says she’s not hungry. Additionally, she is hurt that Sean would choose to make the meal she cooked him when they first returned from their honeymoon.

Amelia rides with Sean to school because there are a ton of reporters outside the house. On the way to school, Sean asks Amelia if she’d like to live with him after the divorce, which she thinks is a nice, but unrealistic, fantasy. As she walks into school, the reporters follow her, asking her questions about the case. She goes to the bathroom and throws up, noting she doesn’t feel any relief.

On the first day of the trial, Piper reflects on her friendship with Charlotte and the fact that she hasn’t returned to work since the lawsuit because she no longer trusts herself to practice medicine. She takes a shower and comes to find Rob downstairs with bagels. He apologizes for how he’s acted the past few months and tells her that she didn’t give Charlotte bad care. He additionally says that he feels differently about his brother, realizing having him in his life provided him with some gifts. He asks if he can go to court with her, to which she agrees.

Marin has tried to reach Charlotte all weekend, but couldn’t get ahold of her, leading her to worry that Charlotte won’t show up for the trial. She is relieved when she sees her. Charlotte tells her she doesn’t know if she can go through with the trial, especially given the conversation she had to have with Willow. Marin encourages Charlotte to get on the stand and make Willow believe her.

Marin begins her opening arguments by talking about Willow and the effects that her condition has had on the O’Keefes. She then talks about how Piper withheld information, which is why the lawsuit was brought today. She stresses that the suit is not about feelings: It’s about facts.

Charlotte can feel Piper watching her in the courtroom and is surprised to see how different she looks now. Charlotte realizes that Piper has changed too throughout this process.

Guy Booker begins his opening arguments, focusing on his theory that Charlotte is purely in the lawsuit for monetary gain and to find someone other than herself to blame for Willow’s OI. As Charlotte listens to Guy, she realizes that while she says she’s suing Piper to help Willow, there’s a small part of her that thinks the lawsuit will help her, too.