Opening
Sleet hammers the island as Sadie Foust chases answers—and loses her alibi, her husband’s trust, and her grip on what’s real. Inside her own home, threats escalate: a missing kitchen knife, a padlocked door, a child’s eerie outburst. Meanwhile, past trauma surfaces in the “Mouse” timeline, where a child—later revealed as Camille—learns to survive a predator wearing the face of family, Erin Sabine.
What Happens
Chapter 26: The Missing Knife
Sadie returns through sleet and spots Officer Berg slipping a sealed envelope into the Nilssons’ mailbox, just as she’s seen him do before. Curiosity wins: she checks the envelope and feels a thick fold she’s sure is cash, then shoves it back. Inside, she stumbles over a doll her son insists isn’t his and boots it across the floor, her nerves frayed.
A coroner’s report confirms Morgan Baines dies by boning knife. Sadie heads straight to the kitchen, pulls the block, and finds a single empty slot—the exact shape of a boning knife. Her suspicion locks onto Imogen: the padlocked bedroom door, the surliness, the watched feeling.
When Will Foust gets home with Tate, Sadie spells it out: k-n-i-f-e. Will shrugs it off—probably in the dishwasher—and insists Imogen’s grief explains her behavior. Then Sadie drops a darker thought: the photo Imogen showed of Alice’s suicide doesn’t add up. The step stool stands upright and out of reach, as if staged. Murder, not suicide. She implies Imogen’s involvement; Will calls her paranoid. Their argument shatters when Tate erupts into a bizarre tantrum, shrieking that Sadie is a liar for forgetting a “statue game” he swears they play. Shaken, Sadie retreats to the bath while Will manages their son.
Chapter 27: The Hawk
Flashback: Mouse—the child who later becomes Camille—adopts survival as a pastime. Her guinea pig, Bert, gives birth; all the babies die. Fake Mom, Erin, looks pleased. Mouse watches wildlife for strategies: zigzagging rabbits, camouflage, nocturnal routines—anything that lets prey slip past a predator. She tries to become invisible.
She names the true predator: the hawk, a remorseless thief of defenseless nests. Fake Mom is the hawk—attacking in small, deniable ways: an elbow jab, a stolen cookie, relentless needling. Mouse clings to memories of camping with her father, a brief sanctuary before Fake Mom maneuvers him into staying home, closing the world around Mouse like a fist.
Chapter 28: Chummy
At the clinic, Officer Berg arrives under the pretense of a check-up and resumes his interrogation. Sadie presents her alibi: a photo of the staffing schedule proving she’s on duty the day Morgan is killed. Berg calmly dismantles it. He’s spoken with Emma, the receptionist—she remembers the day because her daughter is sick—and confirms Sadie vanishes for a three-hour lunch, the precise window of the murder. The chapter cracks open Unreliable Perception and Memory: Sadie’s certainties don’t hold.
Berg shifts tactics. Gossip says Will and Morgan are “chummy.” He produces a school-pickup photo: in the background, Will leans in close, hand on Morgan’s arm, faces intent. Rattled, Sadie accuses Berg of paying Mr. Nilsson to lie, citing the envelope she saw. Berg counters: he’s anonymously supporting the struggling family because they won’t accept public charity. Her accusation collapses. He asks for the truth, implying he knows she’s hiding something.
Chapter 29: The Superintendent
Sleepless and raw from the photo of Will with Morgan, Sadie fixates on Imogen. After a tense morning, Will confronts her: he’s searched Imogen’s phone for the picture of Alice’s body. Nothing—not in photos, not in recently deleted. Imogen claims the photo never existed and accuses Sadie of inventing it to be cruel. The ground shifts under Sadie as Will’s doubt grows, crystallizing the slow creep of Gaslighting and Psychological Abuse.
Desperate, Sadie decides to investigate alone. After dropping Otto Foust at the ferry, she heads to the mainland and researches Jeffrey Baines’s ex-wife, Courtney—now the school district superintendent. At the administrative office, the secretary blocks her. Left briefly alone, Sadie spots Courtney’s coat, slides a hand into its pocket, and steals the car keys. Fear hardens into risk. She crosses a moral line.
Chapter 30: Fake Mom
Another flashback: Mouse’s father leaves for a business trip. The car vanishes down the road, and Fake Mom drops the mask. The door slams. The teddy flies. A stream of icy names and jeering commands pours out, a textbook case of Deception and Manipulation. She shakes Mouse until she cries; Mouse wets herself. Fake Mom laughs and banishes her.
Mouse decides, even then, to stay silent. Telling the truth would hurt her father, who loves Erin. For his sake, she will endure. That vow chisels the grooves of Trauma and Its Lasting Effects deep into her life: watch, adapt, survive—and never tell.
Character Development
The present fractures Sadie’s credibility while the past reveals the origin of Camille’s silence. Suspicions tighten around the family; alliances harden in dangerous ways.
- Sadie Foust: Isolation spikes as Berg ruins her alibi and Will doubts her. She pivots from fearful to active, even criminal—stealing keys—to chase the truth.
- Will Foust: His closeness to Morgan looks damning. He dismisses danger in the house and trusts Imogen over Sadie, reading as naive at best, complicit at worst.
- Imogen: From Sadie’s view, she’s a skilled manipulator—locked doors, missing knife, vanishing photo—and the wedge between spouses.
- Camille (Mouse): The flashbacks map how vigilance, mimicry, and silence become survival. Her childhood teaches her to read predators and disappear.
- Erin Sabine (Fake Mom): A two-faced predator—tender in public, cruel in private—who preys on a child precisely when the protector is gone.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters braid domestic dread with predation. In the present, a missing kitchen knife and a doctored memory destabilize the home; in the past, a child studies prey to outwit a hawk. Deception governs both timelines: Erin’s mask of sweetness, Imogen’s disappearance of evidence, and Berg’s pressure tactics all force Sadie and Mouse into defensive strategies. Gaslighting and memory’s fragility turn “proof” into quicksand, isolating Sadie until crime feels like the only path forward. The flashbacks ground the mystery in long-haul damage—trauma that trains a child to protect others by burying herself.
Symbols sharpen the terror:
- The missing knife recasts the kitchen as a crime scene, suggesting the threat lives inside the home.
- The doll—denied by a child, kicked by a mother—warps innocence and hints at suppressed or reshaped memories.
- The hawk becomes the emblem of predation: patient, superior, merciless—Erin’s private nature revealed when the father is away.
Key Quotes
“Chummy.”
- Berg’s offhand word detonates Sadie’s marital certainty. It reframes an ordinary school pickup as a clandestine intimacy, planting suspicion and destabilizing trust.
“Liar!”
- Tate’s outburst during the “statue game” episode punctures the facade of normalcy. His certainty that Sadie forgets shared moments adds a surreal edge to the novel’s interrogation of memory and suggests unseen forces shaping the household.
“Loose lips.”
- Island gossip becomes a character of its own—steering police focus, igniting paranoia, and eroding private bonds. The phrase captures how small communities weaponize rumor.
“Dirty little rodent.”
- Fake Mom’s slur reduces Mouse to prey and sets the power dynamic: predator vs. defenseless child. It marks the start of a coercive language regime that becomes physical and psychological imprisonment.
“Tell me the truth.”
- Berg’s closing demand corners Sadie. Whether plea or trap, it forces the question the novel keeps asking: whose truth survives when memory and manipulation collide?
Why This Matters and Section Significance
The locus of danger shifts inward. Instead of hunting an external killer, the story presses Sadie to fear her own kitchen, her stepdaughter’s room, even her husband’s loyalties. By stripping Sadie’s alibi and sowing doubt about the suicide photo, the chapters escalate isolation—a key precondition for both abuse and coercion.
The Mouse flashbacks supply the novel’s emotional engine. They explain the cost of silence, the cunning born of fear, and the way predators shape a victim’s worldview. Together, past and present suggest a single, urgent idea: threats thrive in secrecy, especially inside families. As Sadie crosses a legal line to keep investigating, the novel signals that unraveling the truth will demand risk, sacrifice, and a reckoning with what “home” really shelters.