The Nest

“[Leonard Plumb] was happy to set aside some funds to provide a modest safety net for his children’s future, but he also wanted them to be financially independent and to value hard work. He’d grown up around trust fund kids—knew many of them still—and he’d seen the damage an influx of early money caused.”

Though he is deceased when the novel takes place, this quote provides a glimpse at Leonard Plumb Sr.’s personality and character. He seeks to raise wise and capable children who are successful by their own means as well as independent. This image of the Plumb father serves as a foil to memories Melody has of their mother as a parent.

“It never occurred to Leonard that evening […] [that the funds would] inflate to numbers beyond their wildest dreams. He never imagined as the funds grew so, too, would his children’s tolerance for risk, for doing the one thing Leonard had repeatedly warned them not to do, ever, in any avenue of life, from the time they were old enough to understand: count the chickens before they hatched.”

Leonard’s intent for the trust contradicts the way his children—namely, Jack and Melody—grow to regard it. Both make life decisions based on the certainty that the trust will make these expenses possible. Their respective spouses are more in line with Leonard’s original thinking: believing it to be unwise to live as though the trust is a guarantee.

“The three of them wondered how [Leo] did it, to be unruffled while putting everyone else on edge, how even in this moment, at this lunch, where Leo should be abashed, laid bare, and the balance of power, could have, should have, shifted against him, he still commanded their focus and exuded strength.”

Leo is the family’s dominant sibling who never experiences weakness. Even when it is presumed that he should have recognized the magnitude of his mistake and taken accountability for it, this proves not to be the case. Though Leo now owes his siblings money, he somehow still maintains the upper hand.

“Francie had acted so decisively and singularly on his behalf. But Leo quickly realized he was wrong about that, too. Francie hadn’t come to his rescue, no doubt she’d rescued herself—and Harold.”

Leo realizes that his mother’s reason for accessing the trust early is not a magnanimous one designed to protect him but is instead primarily a self-serving one to preserve her own image as a Plumb. In this respect, Leo finds himself in the same position as his siblings, though he has the benefit of his secret offshore account.

“[Bea] didn’t tell Jack what else she thought about Leo, that for all the moments he seemed terrifically healthy and eager and nearly like his old self—his old, old self, the Leo she loved so much and missed even more—there were nearly an equal number of times he seemed remote and anxious. Bea knew Leo better than anyone. On the surface he was fine, stellar even. But she’d also seen him starting out the office windows, jiggling his leg, eyeing the harbor and the ocean beyond like a death row prisoner from Alcatraz who was wondering exactly what distance the body could survive the open water in February.”

Bea differs from Jack and Melody in that, due to working with Leo at SpeakEasy, she knows a side of him that Jack and Melody do not. Where Jack is intimidated by Leo, Bea is privy to a side of his personality that differs. She is able to witness the vulnerability that he is unwilling to show to other people. As a writer, Bea describes her brother here using both imagery and details that serve to deepen his characterization and show readers a side of him that his siblings cannot provide.

“[Bea] was okay with how and when and if Leo paid her back. The apartment was her nest, literally and metaphorically. She could stay there forever and manage on a modest income. She could sell and move someplace cheaper and live contentedly for a long time. Her family didn’t know she owned; it wasn’t anybody’s business.”

In keeping with the theme of The Power of Secrets, Bea keeps her financial security a secret. She is unlike her siblings in this way, as she is not dependent on Leo’s repaying the loan. At the end of the novel, it is Bea who ends up metaphorically saving Melody and Jack, rather than The Nest, by giving them each a loan. Bea also contrasts with her siblings in the sense that she does not seek status—her “business” is hers alone, not for showing off to others to gain prestige.

“Once Leo decided to put a proposal together, take himself and Paul seriously, and approach Nathan with a multifaceted well-thought-out plan for bolstering and expanding, he started having fun. His mood lifted. He was sleeping better than he had in years, waking up before Stephanie and going for a run in Prospect Park, no matter how cold. He spent his days reading, researching, and thinking, and working so hard at times he lost track of time. He’d forgotten how good it felt to be interested, absorbed, stimulated.”

During his time at Stephanie’s, Leo reconnects with the past version of himself that is his best self—this coincides with Bea’s assessment of Leo as having improved. Stephanie, too, will later detect this change in Leo. Abstaining from drug use and leaving his unhappy marriage are likely instrumental in causing this shift.

“[Stephanie] knew it was crazy, told herself a million times a day that it was crazy, but she found she couldn’t completely suppress a few fleeting moments of optimism—about the baby for sure, about Leo, maybe. She was surprised by how responsible he’d be lately, how present.”

As Leo becomes excited about a new career prospect, Stephanie notices the change in his attitude and demeanor. She becomes cautiously hopeful that Leo is becoming a better version of himself and that they might be able to make the relationship work this time. Importantly, though, her optimism about the baby is not dependent on Leo’s presence.

“If he wanted to stay, he was going to have to figure out what to do about the money he owed The Nest. If he wanted to stay.

Many days, he’d considered paying off his siblings because it could be nice, the grand gesture, the rescuing hero. But this is what he kept coming back to: What if he needed that money someday? What if he needed an escape hatch? He’d always had one. Thinking about not having one almost made him dizzy. He kept trying decisions on like jackets: stay, go, pay everyone off. In the past, he’d always been able to thrive in this place, the familiar sweet spot of avoidance, keeping a million plates spinning until they all gradually fell and he quickly moved along to something shinier, but this felt different.”

As Bea and Stephanie have noticed, Leo does appear to be changing. He notices this himself as he finds a new concern for his family, feeling an uncharacteristic obligation to put other people above himself, although he still couches his decision in terms of how his gesture will be perceived as heroic, rather than ethical. This tension drives the plot forward, creating important tension in the novel’s conflict.

“Stephanie started leafing through her take-out menus, annoyed. This was the part she hated, the part of a relationship that always nudged her to bail, the part where someone else’s misery or expectations or neediness crept into her carefully prescribed world. It was such a burden, other people’s lives. She did love Leo. She’d loved.”

This quote provides important foreshadowing of the end of Stephanie’s relationship with Leo. Though she has been cautiously optimistic that this time Leo has changed and thus the relationship will thrive, this turns out not to be the case. Stephanie sees this and honors her boundaries, realizing she is ultimately happier without Leo in her life.

“‘Even if it is about you, and even if Bea gets the thing published, and even if someone reads it and connects it to you—’ Stephanie took a long sip of water. Exhaled ‘Even if all those things happen, who is going to care?’

It was that last sentence she would call back if she could. That was the one where she saw the shift, the slightest narrowing of his gaze, the moment when she had—inadvertently and slightly, but clearly in Leo’s eyes, concisely in his mind—positioned herself on the wrong side of a dividing line.”

Stephanie’s accidental admission that she believes Leo has lost his social status shifts their relationship. Leo feels that Stephanie is no longer truly on his side, rooting for his social and professional comeback. Indeed, from here Stephanie realizes that, though she believed Leo to be different, he truly is not. The relationship soon fizzles out when Leo flees the country, but Stephanie is not saddened by its permanent end.

“Quite possibly the worst thing for [Leo] about Bea’s new story was this, how it had conjured Matilda and everything about Matilda from where he’d buried her deep, deep in a tiny box in some remote corner of his brain.”

Here Leo reveals that, though he does not show it outwardly, he feels some guilt for the pain and suffering he has caused Matilda. Giving her money allowed him to pretend that he did not feel sadness or shame, but reading the events as an outsider would—via Bea’s story—forces Leo to reckon with what he has done. Arguably, his fleeing the country is an attempt to hide from this guilt permanently.

“It wasn’t luxury he missed […] The things money could buy weren’t the reward; the reward was to feel lifted above everyone else, to get a look at the other side of the fence where the grass was rarely greener but always different and what he loved was the contrast—and the choice. The ability to take it in was what mattered; the ability to choose was what mattered.”

Here, Leo examines what it is about wealth that is important to him. He emphasizes that it is not that he loves material possessions, but that he values, instead, the status and freedom that money brings. It is how he is regarded by other people that is truly important to him. Without wealth, Leo must learn to seek meaning via another method.

“Walter raised his voice a little to be heard above the radio. ‘What I really think,’ he said, ‘is the sooner everyone lets go of Leo as their personal savior, the better off everyone will be. Including you. Including us.’”

The words Melody’s husband says here turn out to be true. At the end of the novel, Melody and Jack have accepted the fact that Leo will never repay them and have committed to living a more modest life. Ironically, this modest life makes Melody happier than her previous one. Though Walter (and the other spouses) have attempted to make this point, it does not sink in until the end of the novel when Melody and Jack are forced to reckon with their new financial realities.

“‘He read it,’ [Bea] said, not really believing it yet. The pages in her hands, marked with Leo’s edits, had to be his way of giving her—if not approval—

Permission. Because she knew Leo. If he wanted the story to go away, he never would have taken the time to sit and make it better. He would have burned the pages in Stephanie’s hearth. He would have deposited the entire bundle into a trash can on the street. He would have dumped the whole thing into the river. If she knew anything, she knew that. But he hadn’t.”

While the other siblings are dependent on Leo for financial security, Bea depends on him to boost her professional self-esteem. She trusts his opinion of her writing more than anyone else’s and is certain that he is okay with her pursuing the story that reveals his secret. Importantly, she misinterprets Leo’s margin notes as a sign of his approval, when in reality, he leaves her satchel behind intentionally, presumably hoping the story is permanently lost.

“Acceptance; she had to be honest with herself; she hadn’t told anyone about Leo’s disappearance and the pregnancy because she was holding on to a sliver of hope, and hope, when it came to Leo, was a one-way ticket to despair.”

With time, Stephanie arrives at the realization that Leo has not changed, in truth, and remains problematic in the same ways he was when they broke up the first time. This acceptance of the truth, however, frees Stephanie to pursue a meaningful life as a mother. Stephanie’s realistic perspective on Leo most closely mirrors that of Walter, Melody’s husband. Unlike Leo’s siblings, she understands the futility of hoping that Leo will change his ways.

“Jack interrupted. ‘Don’t. This isn’t anybody’s fault. This is who Leo is.’ What he didn’t say out loud was that he knew who Leo was because he was that person, too. He’d always seen too much of Leo in himself. Maybe not quite as bad as Leo (Leo Lite, for once and for always), but close enough to know that if he had a big bank account somewhere and could get on a plane and disappear, he might do it, too.”

Jack, like many of the other characters, finally becomes honest with himself as the novel draws to a close. Though he has criticized Leo, his admission that he is more like Leo than he is unlike him shows a growth of character as he is willing to finally be honest and face reality.

“[T]hey all thought about that day at the Oyster Bar, seeing Leo’s agreeability then for what it really was. Jack wondered how he—of all of them, the one least susceptible to Leo—could not have been more suspicious about how disarming and humble Leo had been. Bea remembered how it had seemed that Leo was maybe, kind of, taking responsibility and evincing a desire to make good […] How grateful he must have been in that moment, Melody thought, to discover how little they were asking from him, to realize how eager they were to believe him.”

After Leo flees and makes clear to his siblings that he does not intend to repay them, each sibling turns to hindsight to assess the promise he made to do so months earlier. Each of them searches their memories for firm evidence that Leo was genuine in his promise, but ultimately, they all realize that Leo duped them.

“[Melody] looked horrible because she was horrible. How had she been so wrong about everything and everyone? Not realizing Nora was gay and not knowing how to talk to her about it and, by extension, about anything; not noticing the girls’ deception; not understanding Leo was a liar and a thief. Not being the type of mother who would sacrifice a house for her daughters’ college tuition—not willingly, anyway, not lovingly.”

As the novel draws to a close, a shift gradually takes place in many characters, including Melody. She begins to feel badly for the way she has insisted on living a lifestyle that her family cannot actually afford and does not actually want. Coming to the realization that she is the one who is in the wrong is painful, but as Melody slowly accepts that her husband and daughters are happier with a different kind of life, she too, realizes that the upper-class lifestyle is not truly the key to contentment.

“‘You wish she weren’t gay,’ [Jack] said, calmly.

‘Yes. I’m sorry. I’m not saying that to be hurtful. I don’t want her life to be any harder than life already is. I don’t know how to smooth the way for this, make it easier. I don’t know what to say or what to think or how to behave and I don’t know who to talk to. Except you.’”

Melody is alarmed to discover Nora is engaged romantically with a girl. This does not fit with the future Melody has envisioned for her daughter. Much of the growth of Melody’s character involves learning to let go of the vision she has devised for her daughters’ futures and instead allowing them to choose their own paths.

“I miss Walker. I miss him terribly and I don’t know what’s going to happen. But for the first time ever, I’m only accountable to myself and I like it. I’m not proud of why I’m at this point, but I’m doing my best to figure it out, and I’m kind of enjoying it, parts of it anyway.”

Jack discovers that the loss of his relationship with Walker serves as a kind of blessing in disguise. It provides him with an opportunity to learn more about himself and to discover who he truly is and what he truly desires. In this way, the loss of The Nest is an unexpected boon.

“Seeing Leo again made Paul realize how much he loathed him. Nathan had told Paul about Leo’s undermining tactics, how he’d questioned Paul’s leadership and competence. Paul had been furious, but he also recognized that Leo’s misstep had angered Nathan enough to tip the scale in Paul’s favor. The first influx of Nathan’s funding had already arrived and Paul was working night and day to prove to Nathan that he’d made the right choice.”

Leo’s misfortune leads to others’ success. Partway through the novel, Stephanie predicts that Leo’s social standing has already declined, and this passage proves her prediction to be true. This is ironic, given that the money from The Nest was used to protect his reputation. In this way, then, the money may not need to have been paid to silence Victoria and Matilda at all.

“Jack was also wishing for Walker, albeit with more melancholy than grief these days. […] He’d heard from his old friend Arthur that Walker was already living with someone new and in a way, it was nice to learn that, ultimately, Walker had been the one who wasn’t good at being alone. Jack was more relieved than surprised to find out how good he was at living alone. He’d fall in love many more times in his life, but he would never want another man to share his home.”

This quote highlights the change that has occurred in Jack’s character. He has become independent and is happy to realize that he enjoys that independence. In this way, his financial downfall has unexpectedly brought him to a better place than he was in before.