Sydney Childs Timeline and Summary

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• Sydney brings his boss Valerian his breakfast and has a small argument with him about the difference between corns and bunions.
• One night, when Margaret Street rushes into the dining room screaming, Sydney takes out a gun and goes up to her room to investigate what has upset her. He comes across a guy named Son who is hiding in her closet and marches him downstairs with the gun pointed at him.
• While he's marching downstairs, Son says that he needs to pee. Sydney is aghast at how little regard the guy has for his own life.
• Sydney is furious when Valerian asks the intruder to sit down with him for dinner. Sydney has spent his entire life serving Valerian, and he has never once been asked to sit at the table.
• Things only get worse when Valerian gives Son a new suit of clothes and money for new shoes. Sydney can't believe how disrespectful Valerian is being to him and to his wife Ondine.
• One day, Son creeps into the kitchen to tell Sydney that he's sorry for being a thief and an intruder. Sydney isn't satisfied with the apology, but his dislike for Son lessens a bit.
• At Christmas dinner, Valerian invites Sydney and his wife Ondine to sit at the dinner table. The dinner quickly goes sideways, though, when Sydney and Ondine get angry at Valerian for firing some of his employees.
• During the dinner, Ondine tells Valerian that Margaret used to abuse their son when he was just a baby. The news leaves Valerian crushed.
• Valerian fires Ondine and Sydney, but never follows through on it.
• Ten months later, Valerian is a husk of his former self and he's becoming increasingly enfeebled. Now it's Sydney who calls the shots and tells Valerian what to do.
• At the end of the book, Sydney joins his wife Ondine in the kitchen and discusses how bitter their disappointment is at being abandoned by their niece, Jade, for whom they've sacrificed everything.