Avery Wooler

Quick Facts

• Role: Nine-year-old missing girl whose “abduction” ignites the plot; ultimately revealed as the architect of her own disappearance.
• First appearance: Early chapters, shortly after being sent home from choir.
• Family: Daughter of William and Erin Wooler; younger sister to Michael.
• Physical description (police bulletin): Blonde hair, blue eyes, four-foot-two, about sixty pounds; last seen in dark blue jeans, a white daisy T-shirt, and pink running shoes. The image of a quintessentially innocent child contrasts sharply with her behavior.
• Pivotal connections: William (father), Erin (mother), Michael (brother), Marion Cooke (neighbor/accomplice), Casey Wong (journalist who exposes her).

Who They Are

At first glance, Avery Wooler is the perfect victim—young, pretty, and vulnerable—yet the novel uses her to invert the reader’s expectations. As the supposed target of a crime, Avery initially elicits sympathy; as the plot unfolds, she becomes the story’s most unsettling force, weaponizing the façade of childhood innocence to drive the book’s exploration of Deceit and Lies and the slipperiness of appearances. Avery’s calm, calculated self-presentation—especially in public moments—turns the trope of the “angelic missing child” on its head, revealing how easily innocence can conceal intent and power, a tension that also underlines Appearance vs. Reality.

Personality & Traits

Avery’s profile is a deliberate contradiction: a “gifted,” diagnosed child whose sharp intelligence and thin empathy make her both compelling and chilling. She reads the adults around her with cold clarity, anticipates their reactions, and scripts outcomes to maximize control and attention.

• Manipulative and calculating: She stages her own disappearance to punish her father, calibrating every step—from where to hide to how she’ll reemerge—as an act of Revenge and Obsession. She plays her parents’ opposing approaches (Erin’s softness, William’s rigidity) against each other to keep herself at the center.
• Defiant and oppositional: Her everyday interactions drip with contempt for authority—she talks back, ignores rules, and enjoys the power of refusal. Even mundane scenes (reaching for cookies after snapping, “I live here”) show how habitual her defiance is, not just reactive but identity-defining.
• Vengeful: After William hits her, Avery does not seek safety or comfort; she plots retribution. The goal isn’t escape—it’s watching him suffer, preferably in public.
• Intelligent and perceptive: Labeled “very bright—gifted,” Avery keenly sizes up adult vulnerabilities, choosing the ally most useful to her (Marion) and tailoring her “victim” performance for maximum credibility.
• Narcissistic, attention-seeking: She fantasizes about interviews, fame, and a book deal after her “heroic” return; being at the story’s center matters as much as revenge.
• Lacks empathy: She registers her family’s anguish as confirmation that her plan is working. Even after Marion’s death, her focus remains on managing appearances, not remorse.

Character Journey

Avery’s arc doesn’t follow growth; it exposes layers. She begins as a missing child who commands communal pity. As the narrative filters through family accounts and new evidence, sympathy erodes: Avery is not prey but hunter, turning a household’s private volatility into public spectacle. Hiding with Marion Cooke—believing she controls the terms—Avery miscalculates her partner and then resorts to fatal force. By the time she reaches the lights of television, she is a polished self-narrator, until one slip—“She double-cross—”—unravels the persona she’s been curating. Her trajectory maps the novel’s portrait of a family caught in the rip tide of Family Dysfunction, where discipline, denial, and desire collide and a child learns that the surest form of power is the story other people think they see.

Key Relationships

• William Wooler: William’s rigidity and growing exasperation culminate in the slap that Avery seizes as justification for revenge. She weaponizes his mistake, engineering a scenario in which his guilt—moral and public—becomes the punishment she craves.
• Erin Wooler: Erin’s patience and protective love give Avery cover; she knows her mother will defend and explain away her behavior. The televised interview shatters Erin’s denial, forcing her to see the chasm between the daughter she protects and the strategist on camera.
• Michael Wooler: Michael’s mix of resentment and fear makes him vulnerable to Avery’s need for control. He recognizes the chaos she brings, yet his older-sibling responsibility keeps drawing him back into her orbit.
• Marion Cooke: Avery thinks Marion is a pawn—someone to hide her and help frame William—but misreads Marion’s fixation and volatility. Their alliance is a hall of mirrors: each believes she’s using the other, until the trap closes and Avery chooses violence to retake control.

Defining Moments

Avery’s story is a chain of choices where performance and power feed each other.

• The kitchen confrontation: William, pushed past his limits, strikes Avery. Why it matters: This becomes the moral fulcrum of her plan—she recasts real harm into a public narrative designed to destroy him, turning private failure into public spectacle.
• Hiding in Marion’s basement: Avery willingly disappears with Marion’s help. Why it matters: It reveals premeditation and collaboration, shifting Avery from victim to co-author of the “abduction” story.
• “Escape” and Marion’s death: Discovering Marion has locked her in, Avery waits at the top of the stairs and pushes her to her death, then stages a getaway. Why it matters: She crosses from manipulation to lethal action, proving her priority is control, not safety.
• The televised interview: Under Casey Wong’s gentle probing, Avery’s script frays; “She double-cross—” exposes her complicity. Why it matters: The moment strips away her carefully curated innocence, forcing family and community to confront who has been directing this story all along.

Essential Quotes

"I live here," she says sarcastically. And she turns away from him and reaches for the cookies...

This offhand defiance encapsulates Avery’s daily power play: claiming space, denying authority, and rewarding herself in the same breath. The childish setting (cookies, kitchen) makes the contempt more unsettling—her rebellion is not episodic but routine.

"No." And it’s that defiance in her voice, as if she holds all the cards, as if he’s nothing and has no authority over her at all, that sets him off.

The narration isolates her tone as the trigger, spotlighting how Avery wields voice as a weapon. The line also foreshadows the dynamic of the entire plot: she does hold the cards, because she’s already planning the next move.

She’s complicated. She’s a lovely nine-year-old girl. Very bright—gifted, actually. But she’s challenging. She has a learning disability and ADHD. She also has behavioral problems.

This diagnostic litany becomes a mask and a mirror—both a compassionate attempt to explain Avery and a conceptual fog she can hide behind. The gap between “lovely” and “challenging” primes the novel’s interest in how labels can misdescribe agency.

"She double-crossed you, is that what you were going to say, Avery? . . . What do you mean?"

The interviewer’s prompt catches Avery mid-performance, turning a single fragment into evidence of collusion. In public, under lights, Avery’s control slips—and with it, the protective narrative of victimhood she has so carefully constructed.