Our Fault

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child abuse, emotional abuse, violence, cursing, and sexual content. 

“When you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, there’s no going back. Lots of people never learn what that feels like. I knew that Nick was the love of my life, the man I wanted to be the father of my children, the man I wanted by my side through good and bad, in sickness and in health, till death did us part.”

The author uses foreshadowing in the Prologue to establish the stakes of Noah Morgan and Nick Leister’s story. Noah is grieving what she lost with Nick when they broke up roughly a year prior. However, she’s also claiming what she wants with Nick for their future. Acknowledging her desires at the novel’s start lets her work towards the future and predicts the loving marital and family life the two will establish by the novel’s end, illustrating The Redemptive Power of Love.

“I dropped my backpack on the conveyor belt, took off my watch and bracelets, took off the necklace with the pendant that I always wore—even if I should have taken it off a long time ago—and set it all down next to my cell phone and the spare change I had in my pocket.”

Noah’s interaction with her pendant captures the symbolic significance of the item. Noah is attached to the necklace because it represents what she and Nick had before they broke up. The image of her removing it in airport security foreshadows the scene where Nick takes the necklace back from her. Noah isn’t aware of it yet, but she’ll soon have to make peace with her and Nick’s fractured relationship—an emotional dynamic captured in this scene. In removing the necklace and her other accessories, Noah is preparing to emotionally let go of Guilt, Regret, and the Past, too.