Livingston, New Jersey, frames the Bayes’ home life as a place where suburban familiarity does not guarantee ease: the family house contains a room Mike and Tia experience as forbidden territory, and their street brings them into the orbit of neighbors whose private lives remain close at hand.

Setting and Domestic Geography

Mike Baye and Tia Baye live in a split-level house described as a McMansion in Livingston. The novel establishes the town through this private domestic setting rather than through a broader portrait of its streets or institutions. Their house is both recognizably their own and, at a crucial moment, a place in which they feel out of place.

The House as a Threshold

In their bedroom, an installer pauses to ask whether Mike and Tia are sure they want to proceed. Mike reads the question as ominous, and the moment makes the room feel like a threshold: although the couple are in their own home, they are confronting a decision that has turned this space into enemy territory. The room’s traces of an earlier adolescence sharpen that tension. Hockey trophies remain on the shelf, no longer dominant, while sports posters have faded or gone unattended. The familiar objects register the distance between the room’s past and the unsettled present.

Neighbors and Narrative Role

Livingston’s neighborhood also appears through an ordinary arrival home. As Mo turns onto the Bayes’ street, Mike sees Susan Loriman outside, apparently occupied with a yard chore. Mike recognizes that she is pretending to work; after they pull into the driveway, Mo comments on her appearance, and Mike answers by invoking her husband. The brief exchange places neighborly familiarity alongside the privacy of household life: people observe one another at close range, but what they are doing and why may not be as straightforward as it looks. In these scenes, Livingston serves as the setting for both domestic unease and everyday encounters between residents.