Sam

Sam is Kari Adel’s partner and the person with whom she is already trying to start a family. Their plans form the personal horizon against which Kari makes a striking choice: she declines both an interesting Justice Department offer and a highly paid insurance-company job.

Relationship and Plans

By the time Kari reflects on her decision, she and Sam are already trying for a baby. The detail makes their relationship more than a passing connection: they are building a shared future, even as Kari weighs professional possibilities that might have taken her elsewhere.

Kari’s Choice

Kari’s decision surprises even her. She turns down two distinct offers, one attractive for its work at the Justice Department and the other for its enormous salary. The account gives no explanation from Sam and does not attribute the choice to pressure from him; it presents the decision as Kari’s own, made while she and Sam are trying to conceive.

Narrative Context

Kari reaches this reflection after saying goodbye to Else and leaving into a summer night. Time carries her forward to a car journey through virgin snow, whose transformation of the landscape prompts her to think about how plans can turn out differently. That thought leads into the contrast between the life she might have pursued through either job and the family future she and Sam are already attempting to create.