CHARACTER
Local Woman Missingby Mary Kubica

Erin Sabine

Erin Sabine

Quick Facts

Who They Are

Erin Sabine is the novel’s most consequential absence. Dead before the main plot begins, she exists at first as a beautiful myth—a lost “first love” whose perfection Sadie can’t hope to match. As the truth surfaces, the myth disintegrates: Erin is not a romantic tragedy but the origin point of the book’s violence. Her afterlife in Will’s narrative becomes evidence of how stories are weaponized. Erin’s memory binds past and present, linking Will’s secret history to Morgan’s death and to the slow unraveling of Sadie’s marriage.

Personality & Traits

Erin’s personality reaches us through others—especially Will—making every trait suspect. The reader must sift the woman from the legend. What emerges is a young woman moving beyond a high-school romance, reclaimed by Will as an ideal he could control only in death.

  • Carefree and audacious: A photograph shows her “wild” hair and “carefree” smile; Will’s early account frames her as “foolhardy,” supposedly taking a scenic route during a snowstorm.
  • Independent: She intended to end her engagement after meeting someone at college—proof of agency that contradicts Will’s tale of unbreakable young love.
  • Idealized to the point of erasure: For years, Will curates Erin as a sainted memory; Sadie internalizes this, calling Erin “breathtaking” and feeling like the perennial “second pick.”
  • Beautiful and magnetic: Fair skin, blue eyes, blond hair—the kind of beauty that becomes a narrative instrument. Sadie’s jealousy is visceral when she holds the hidden photo, revealing how appearance fuels insecurity and mythmaking.

Character Journey

Erin’s “arc” is the reader’s shifting understanding of her. She begins as a romantic casualty—a car accident that froze youthful love in amber. The illusion cracks when Sadie recognizes Morgan’s family photo and realizes Erin and Morgan are sisters, binding a decades-old death to the current case. The final rupture arrives with Will’s confession: he staged Erin’s car accident, drugging and suffocating her when she tried to end the engagement. In a single revelation, Erin’s role pivots from lost love to first victim, exposing Will’s pathology and revealing how a murderer can hide behind a grief-stricken script.

Key Relationships

Will Foust Erin is the cornerstone of Will’s self-mythology. He sells their past as a tender, irreplaceable first love, but the truth reveals control, possessiveness, and lethal entitlement. Even after her death, Will exploits Erin’s memory—keeping her photo, repurposing her engagement ring—to manage Sadie’s perceptions and preserve his image as a sorrow-marked man.

Sadie Foust To Sadie, Erin is both an ideal and a threat. The hidden photograph, the hand-me-down ring, and Will’s reverent anecdotes convince Sadie she is a substitute for a woman she can never surpass. Erin’s aura intensifies Sadie’s insecurity until the revelation of Will’s crime replaces jealousy with horror and clarity.

Morgan Baines The discovery that Morgan is Erin’s younger sister transforms a background tragedy into the beating heart of the mystery. Morgan’s suspicion that Will killed Erin makes her dangerous—linking Erin’s death to Morgan’s fate and demonstrating how the past refuses to stay buried.

Defining Moments

Erin’s story lives in a handful of charged revelations that reframe the novel’s present.

  • Sadie finds Erin’s hidden photograph Why it matters: Erin becomes tangible—a secret Sadie can hold. The beauty in the photo deepens Sadie’s sense of inferiority and hints at Will’s continued attachment, planting early doubts about his transparency.
  • The family photo at Morgan’s house Why it matters: Sadie recognizes Erin from a news article. Two separate narratives—Erin’s tragic accident and Morgan’s present-day danger—collapse into one, shifting the book from coincidence to conspiracy.
  • Will’s confession of murder Why it matters: The story of a storm and a scenic route is unmasked as a staged killing with drugs and suffocation. Erin’s death is no longer backstory; it’s the primal crime that explains Will’s pattern and precipitates the novel’s cascade of violence.

Essential Quotes

“I knew in that instant: Will only loved me because she was gone. I was his second pick.” Analysis: Sadie crystallizes Erin’s power over her marriage. Erin’s idealization becomes a tool that both Will and Sadie wield—he to control, she to self-punish—revealing how a dead woman can dictate the living through narrative alone.

“What we had was just young love between two stupid kids. What you and I have,” he says, tapping my chest and then his in turn, and I have to look away because his stare is so intense it gets inside of me. “This, Sadie. This is marriage.” Analysis: Will reframes Erin as immaturity to elevate his present—classic narrative management. The intensity of his gaze foreshadows coercion; his definition of “marriage” masks dominance as devotion.

“The problem was, Erin didn’t love me back. I don’t take well to rejection.” Analysis: In a single admission, Will discloses motive and mindset. Rejection becomes an existential threat to his control, converting romantic loss into a justification for lethal violence.

“No one considered that Erin might’ve died because of a shitload of Xanax in her system, because of hypoxia, because of a plastic bag strapped down over her head.” Analysis: The clinical detail dismantles the romance of the “tragic accident.” The raw specificity exposes the gap between public narrative and private brutality—the book’s core engine of deception.

“My gasp is audible… The photo is old, twenty years maybe… I stare at the picture, into Erin’s eyes. There’s a pang of jealousy because of how beautiful she is. How magnetic.” Analysis: This first sensory encounter makes Erin’s myth corporeal. Sadie’s jealousy is not just about beauty; it’s about story—how an image can colonize a marriage, and how a curated past can eclipse the present.