Save Your Pity

For thirty chapters Newland Archer has believed himself the cleverest person in his marriage. In the last four, Roxane Gay shows you who was actually moving the pieces: May stops his confession without raising her voice, the family closes ranks at a farewell dinner Gay calls the death of Newland's delusions, and a pregnancy is announced to exactly the right person first. Then Paris, thirty years on: a man on a bench below Ellen Olenska's window, deciding not to go up. The episode is called Save Your Pity, and she means it. Listen for who authored this ending, and for what finally happens to the word innocence.