Opening
Past and present collide as hidden wounds surface. Sadie’s mind fractures, a marriage curdles behind closed doors, and the family’s unresolved past seeps into every room of the house. Across five chapters, memory gaps, a knife, a mistress, and a daughter’s secrets redraw the map of trust.
What Happens
Chapter 11: Wed, Wemember?
At her clinic, Sadie Foust sits on the waiting-room floor, absently playing a bead game with a little girl she doesn’t remember meeting. Her thoughts scatter; her body feels wrong. Joyce, her nurse, snaps her back to the present—Sadie has an eleven o’clock waiting, and the lobby is full.
In the kitchen, Sadie gulps water, clocking Joyce’s disapproval and thinking of Chicago, the “claim of negligence” that ended her emergency-medicine career and gutted her confidence. Then she looks at the wall clock: 1:15 p.m. Two hours are gone. She can’t account for them—an unnerving rupture that spotlights Unreliable Perception and Memory.
Chapter 12: This is Marriage
Driving home in early winter dark, Sadie scans the quiet street and the empty summer house next door, now a plausible hiding place for a killer. She debates confronting Mr. Nilsson about his claim that she argued with Morgan Baines but decides it’s too aggressive. Inside, Will Foust is cooking; Sadie stiffens at his touch. On the counter sits his true-crime novel with a photo of Erin Sabine tucked inside.
She confronts him. Will says he found the photo while unpacking, the 20th anniversary of Erin’s death made him reflective. He calls his teenage romance “young love between two stupid kids,” insisting what he and Sadie have is “marriage.” Then he leans in with a chilling reassurance that functions as Gaslighting and Psychological Abuse: he sometimes thanks God Erin died, or he might never have met Sadie. She lets him soothe her, but distrust lodges in place.
Chapter 13: It Was Mom's Idea
Family dinner simmers. Imogen is absent; Otto Foust saws at his pork chop, and the knife jerks Sadie back to Chicago—the “first rift.” Fourteen-year-old Otto was caught at school with an eight-inch chef’s knife from Will’s set. In the principal’s office, he described relentless bullying: slurs, shoves, humiliation.
Pressed on why he brought the knife, Otto lied: “It was Mom’s idea... She’s the one who put it in my backpack.” Humiliated and betrayed, Sadie denied it; Will said she was too hard on their son, splitting the couple. Two weeks later, Sadie discovered Will’s affair. Then Aunt Alice died. Will proposed a move to Maine, a fresh start that never healed the core wound—evidence of Trauma and Its Lasting Effects. Back in the present, Sadie stares out into the dark, wondering if bad luck follows them like weather.
Chapter 14: Mr. and Mrs. Foust
The voice shifts to Camille, Will’s mistress in Chicago. She narrates with cool entitlement: she pulled him from cheap motels to the Waldorf Astoria—because she deserved better. Will told her, “There’s nothing... that I wouldn’t do for you.”
Camille enters Sadie’s home, touches her expensive things, studies the wedding photo, and dismisses Sadie as “ordinary at best.” She frames Sadie as controlling and emasculating, casting herself as the woman who made Will “feel like a man.” They have sex in Will and Sadie’s bed. The trespass is total, the betrayal unashamed—a study in Deception and Manipulation.
Chapter 15: It's Always the Husband
By 7:30 p.m., Imogen still isn’t home. Sadie, on edge, searches her room. She finds rage carved into a desk, a condom, and a photo of a man with his face scratched out. In a sweatshirt pocket: a folded breakup note—“I can’t keep living this double life.” Imogen’s footsteps send Sadie scrambling to put it all back.
A brief interlude slips into “Mouse,” a child who learns to use the loudest squeaky stair as an alarm—a small groan that buys just enough time to hide. The house itself becomes a warning system, and childhood becomes strategy.
Back with Sadie and Will, a light glows at the Baines house. Jeffrey, under police watch, clears out his things. Will refuses to attend Morgan’s memorial—“presumptuous,” he says. Sadie studies Jeffrey’s stoicism and murmurs, “It’s always the husband,” imagining a hired killer and a perfect alibi. Will bristles, dismissing the idea.
Character Development
The fractures in the Foust family sharpen into a pattern: secrecy breeds distortion, and distortion feeds harm.
- Sadie Foust: Lost time cements her unreliable perception; the knife flashback reveals layered guilt—from Otto’s lie, Will’s affair, and her professional collapse—fueling current paranoia and vigilance.
- Will Foust: Charm thins to control. His handling of Erin’s photo and his “comforting” logic expose emotional manipulation, while Camille confirms chronic infidelity.
- Otto Foust: Seen as a bullied teen driven to a desperate act, he compounds the crisis by blaming his mother, deepening their rupture and explaining his present withdrawal.
- Camille: Calculating and status-obsessed, she recasts betrayal as empowerment, taking pleasure in trespass and dominance.
- Imogen: Absent in body but loud in artifacts—anger, sexuality, secrecy—she emerges as a teen living a double life beyond her parents’ reach.
Themes & Symbols
- Deception and Manipulation drive these chapters. Lies operate at every scale: Will reframes past love and present marriage to control Sadie; Camille curates a narrative where her desire justifies intrusion; Otto’s lie at school detonates trust; Imogen’s hidden relationship blooms in the dark. Each deception seeks power—over a partner, a parent, a self-image.
- Trauma and Its Lasting Effects lock the family in a feedback loop. The knife incident becomes an origin story for their move, their mistrust, and Sadie’s hypervigilance. Even comfort—like Will’s embrace—carries the residue of harm.
- Unreliable Perception and Memory manifests in Sadie’s time loss and triggered flashbacks, destabilizing what the reader can accept as fact. The narrative mirrors her mind: fragmented, insecure, easily steered by fear.
- Symbol: The squeaky step turns the home into both threat and warning. For Mouse, the groan is survival; for the novel, it’s a metronome of dread pulsing beneath domestic surfaces.
Key Quotes
“It was Mom’s idea... She’s the one who put it in my backpack.”
- Otto’s accusation doesn’t just shift blame; it weaponizes Sadie’s role as mother. The lie fractures familial trust and becomes the seed of the Fousts’ relocation and ongoing suspicion.
“There’s nothing... that I wouldn’t do for you.”
- Will’s declaration to Camille reads as devotion but functions as surrender of boundaries. It previews how far he’ll go to preserve the affair and how easily he molds truth to the listener he wants to keep.
“I can’t keep living this double life.”
- Imogen’s hidden note exposes a secret romance and mirrors the novel’s pattern of split selves. The line widens the suspect pool and signals that duplicity is generational in this family.
“It’s always the husband.”
- Sadie’s comment channels true-crime shorthand and projects her marital distrust outward. It’s part instinct, part displacement—she sees danger in husbands because her own has made danger ordinary.
“Young love between two stupid kids.”
- Will minimizes Erin to elevate his marriage, repackaging grief as maturity. The phrasing smooths away complexity and primes Sadie to accept his control as care.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters supply the novel’s emotional engine. The knife incident, Will’s affair, and Sadie’s compromised memory aren’t side notes to a missing-woman case; they are the framework through which every clue gets filtered. Introducing Camille’s point of view verifies Will’s betrayal while deepening the moral fog, and Imogen’s secret note proves the household is a hive of concealed lives. The “Mouse” interlude threads domestic dread through the timeline, suggesting the real danger originates inside the home. Together, these scenes push the story from mystery into psychological thriller, where solving a disappearance requires first deciphering a family’s lies.