Opening
The investigation tightens as Detective Michaela 'Mickey' Fitzpatrick chases a lead: grainy footage, a “Wildwood” sweatshirt, and a community rattled by fear. A flashback offers the sisters’ brightest stretch—Kacey sober, home, and hopeful—only to end with a devastating relapse that reframes everything Mickey believes about love, trust, and truth.
What Happens
Chapter 9: Wildwood
Monday after Thanksgiving, Homicide’s Detective Nguyen briefs Mickey’s squad: security footage shows the newest victim, Katie Conway, followed seconds later by a man in a “Wildwood” sweatshirt. The image is blurry, but Nguyen profiles him as a white male in his forties and labels him a person of interest. Mickey spends the frigid shift walking the neighborhood with stills of the video. The streets feel brittle with tension; for the first time, residents ask her directly about the murders. She falls back on the department’s safe script—“We’re getting close”—and feels the lie burn.
Near the end of her shift, she spots Paula Mulroney outside a coffee shop. Hoping for a lead on Kacey Fitzpatrick, Mickey approaches, but Paula is shaking, sick, and hostile. “I don’t talk to the police,” she says, shutting Mickey out. When Mickey brings up Katie Conway, Paula softens just enough to call Katie a “nice kid” with a “godawful” mother who pushed her onto the street. Mickey shows her the video. Paula scoffs—then studies. Her expression curdles into fury. She accuses Mickey of trying to trick her and drops a bomb: the man in the “Wildwood” sweatshirt is a cop.
Chapter 10: The Lie
Then: the year Kacey is locked up. After a brutal detox that nearly ends in suicide, Kacey writes Mickey an apology. Letters turn into visits; visits turn into hope. Mickey watches Kacey reassemble herself—clear-eyed, sober, lucid, determined. Preparing for Kacey’s release, Mickey paints a room in Kacey’s favorite color and hangs tarot card prints—The High Priestess, The World, The Sun—small altars to the future and to the sisters’ fraught Family Bonds and Dysfunction.
For six months after release, they live in a fragile peace. Kacey stays sober, works at a movie theater, and starts dating. Simon Cleare remains in Mickey’s life; he and Kacey manage an uneasy truce. Kacey distrusts him, asking why Mickey never goes to his apartment. Mickey refuses to pry. She knows she’s choosing a quiet fiction over an unsettling truth; she prefers the lie because it keeps the house calm. Then one day her shift is canceled. She comes home early, finds the door unlocked, and draws her weapon. Upstairs she finds not a burglar but Kacey—and a friend. The voice, the eyes—Mickey recognizes relapse in an instant. A quick search turns up syringes and bags of heroin. The peaceful lie shatters.
Character Development
Mickey’s professional resolve collides with institutional rot in the present, while the flashback exposes her private blind spots. Kacey’s brightest, most stable self appears—only to collapse, deepening the ache that propels the present-day search. Paula shifts from background figure to catalytic witness.
- Mickey Fitzpatrick: Dogged on patrol and guarded with the public, she’s rattled by the idea that the killer could be a cop. In the past, her love is practical and tender, but she admits a core flaw: choosing comfort over truth, especially with Simon.
- Kacey Fitzpatrick: Sober, focused, and hopeful post-incarceration; her relapse devastates not only her progress but Mickey’s belief in sustained recovery.
- Paula Mulroney: Sick, suspicious, and furious—her refusal to engage shows the burned bridge between the neighborhood and police. Her identification of the “Wildwood” man as a cop detonates the case.
- Simon Cleare: Kept at arm’s length in the narrative, he becomes a pressure point—Kacey’s distrust and Mickey’s evasion heighten his ambiguity.
Themes & Symbols
Secrets and Betrayal [link: Secrets and Betrayal]: The footage hints at a killer inside the very institution charged with protection, a brutal breach of trust. In the past, Mickey’s silence about Simon and her willingness to “keep the peace” become private betrayals, while Kacey’s relapse breaks the hard-won trust between sisters.
Moral Ambiguity [link: Moral Ambiguity]: If a cop is the predator, the boundary between guardian and threat collapses. Mickey’s rote reassurance to residents—“We’re getting close”—shows a smaller, sanctioned dishonesty that maintains order but corrodes integrity.
The Unescapable Past and Addiction [links: The Unescapable Past, Addiction and Its Consequences]: Kacey’s relapse demonstrates how history reasserts itself. Even after months of clarity, the gravitational pull of trauma and dependency distorts the present and derails the future.
Symbols
- Tarot cards: The High Priestess, the World, the Sun serve as talismans—wisdom, wholeness, vitality—that Mickey tries to summon for Kacey. Their presence in the carefully made room turns elegiac once relapse returns, marking the distance between hope and reality.
Key Quotes
“I don’t talk to the police.” Paula’s line crystallizes the neighborhood’s alienation from law enforcement. It also frames her revelation about the “Wildwood” man as both credible and dangerous: she knows things—but only in spite of, not because of, the police.
“I was more afraid of the truth than the lie.” Mickey’s confession names her flaw and sets the terms of her arc. Self-protective denial keeps her temporarily safe but blinds her to threats—personal and institutional—that demand confrontation.
“I tried hard to ignore the low noise that thrummed throughout my day, some tolling, cautionary bell. I wouldn’t listen. I wanted everything to stay as it was... The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.” This extended admission turns Mickey into a self-aware yet unreliable narrator. Her hunger for stability shapes what she sees—and what she refuses to see—casting doubt over her judgments about Kacey, Simon, and the case.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
Paula’s identification of the suspect as a cop pivots the investigation from a hunt for an outside predator to a dangerous internal reckoning. The stakes escalate: Mickey is no longer just canvassing streets—she’s navigating an institution that may protect the killer.
The flashback supplies the emotional engine of the novel’s present. By tracing Kacey’s sobriety and relapse, the chapters show why Mickey refuses to stop looking: she has witnessed Kacey’s best self. The twin betrayals—an institutional one in the “Now,” a personal one in the “Then”—echo across timelines, exposing how lies, even tender ones, postpone catastrophe rather than prevent it.