CHARACTER
No One Can Knowby Kate Alice Marshall

Daphne Palmer

Daphne Palmer — In-Depth Character Analysis

Quick Facts

  • Role: Youngest Palmer sister; secret-keeper and hidden architect of the novel’s central mysteries
  • Occupation: End-of-life caregiver
  • First Appearance: Introduced as the quiet youngest sister in childhood scenes; reemerges in the present as a competent, almost invisible professional in Arden Hills
  • Family: Sisters — Emma Palmer, Juliette “JJ” Palmer; Parents — Irene Palmer, Randolph Palmer
  • Adversaries/Targets: Nathan Gates (killed by Daphne), Rick Hadley (framed by Daphne)
  • Core Reveal: Daphne is the one who killed her father and later Nathan, with the broader twists summarized in the Full Book Summary

Who She Is

Boldly quiet and endlessly watchful, Daphne Palmer is the sister who survives by seeing everything—and letting almost nothing of herself be seen. As a child, she learned to disappear under her mother’s abuse; as an adult, she turns that invisibility into power, operating as the family’s covert protector. Daphne’s empathy expresses as strategy: she treats danger like a puzzle to solve, secrets like tools to wield, and love like a mission with no acceptable failures.

Her physical evolution mirrors this psychological turn. Once a “skinny teenager” who starved herself in response to Irene’s control, Daphne becomes a woman with a “full and round” face, “bright” eyes, and “thick and strong” arms—“She took up space, and she liked it.” She deploys her appearance like camouflage, cutting sharp bangs and dyeing her hair “oak-brown” to move unnoticed through Arden Hills, then ending the novel with a platinum-blond pixie—an audible declaration of agency.

Symbolically, Daphne embodies the friction between what people seem to be and what they’re capable of. Beneath the unassuming youngest-sister veneer lives the novel’s most dangerous strategist, a figure defined by Truth vs. Perception and the power of buried Secrets and Lies.

Personality & Traits

Daphne’s defining trait is control—of herself, of information, and of outcomes. She is both caregiver and tactician, someone who can read a room and then rearrange the pieces to protect the people she loves, even if it means crossing every moral line.

  • Observant and perceptive: Labeled a “peculiar child” who was “always watching,” she becomes the family’s silent data bank, piecing together timelines, motives, and risks long before anyone else notices.
  • Methodical and cunning: In caregiving, she reduces situations to “a series of problems to solve,” a framework she extends to crime-scene logistics—retrieving a gun and flash drive, timing movements, and planting evidence with clinical precision.
  • Deceptive and manipulative: She operates through false identities—fake social media accounts, a dog-walker persona—so she can monitor Emma’s home without suspicion, controlling information even from her sisters.
  • Fiercely protective: Her loyalty to Emma drives her choices, including killing Nathan when she judges him a threat to Emma and the baby, a personal embodiment of Sisterhood and Shifting Loyalties.
  • Ruthless: Daphne does what others won’t. She shoots Randolph, smothers her dying mother, kills Nathan in a struggle, and bludgeons Rick at the river—violence framed, in her mind, as the price of family safety.

Character Journey

Daphne’s arc moves from invisibility to authorship. As a child, she copes with Irene’s psychological abuse by shrinking herself—panic attacks, disordered eating, silence. When she overhears her father threaten one of the girls, she acts: she shoots Randolph, then smothers Irene after her suicide attempt, and hides the gun and flash drive with chilling foresight. Adulthood finds her reinvented—no longer a “sprig of a girl,” but a muscular, unblinking problem-solver who “takes up space.” The final reveal in Chapter 55 reframes everything: Daphne hasn’t merely kept the family’s secrets; she has manufactured the narrative itself, culminating in framing Rick Hadley to secure her sisters’ future. The powerless child becomes the family’s ultimate arbiter.

Key Relationships

Emma Palmer To Daphne, Emma is the sister who must be protected at all costs. She stalks Emma’s life from the shadows—through fake accounts and a dog-walker alias—and judges Nathan a threat to Emma and her unborn child, acting lethally to remove him. Their relationship is love sharpened into control, with Daphne willing to shoulder moral ruin so Emma doesn’t have to.

Juliette “JJ” Palmer Daphne safeguards JJ’s secrets in childhood and later weaponizes that history, allowing JJ to believe she caused their parents’ deaths. When the danger escalates, Daphne reveals the truth strategically to bind the sisters together against a common threat, a reunion built on both trust and manipulation.

Irene and Randolph Palmer These parents are the origin of Daphne’s damage and the justification for her violence. Irene’s psychological cruelty and Randolph’s menace produce a daughter who equates love with preemptive force—killing to stop the cycle, a grim expression of Family Trauma and Dysfunction.

Nathan Gates Nathan is the line Daphne won’t let be crossed. She kills him in a struggle when he endangers Emma, revealing the tipping point where her protective love becomes lethal certainty. With Nathan, her caregiving ethos—solving problems—turns into a moral calculus with blood on it.

Rick Hadley Rick is both threat and instrument. Daphne saves her sisters at the river by brutally incapacitating him, then later converts him into a scapegoat—planting the gun and flash drive in his garage—demonstrating how her protective instinct collapses into orchestration and control.

Defining Moments

Daphne’s life is punctuated by decisive, often hidden acts that rewrite the family’s fate.

  • The childhood killings: After overhearing her father’s threat, twelve-year-old Daphne shoots Randolph. She then smothers Irene, who has shot herself and is dying—an act she frames as mercy and containment. Why it matters: It seeds the novel’s deepest secret and hardwires Daphne to equate protection with elimination.
  • Hiding the evidence: She stashes the gun and flash drive in the carriage house immediately after the deaths. Why it matters: This calm, procedural response marks the birth of her adult methodology—plan first, feel later.
  • The river confrontation: Tracking Emma’s phone, Daphne arrives as Rick attacks Emma and JJ and bludgeons him with a rock. Why it matters: The scene fuses love and violence; she will be the family’s sword when required.
  • Killing Nathan Gates: Determining he’s a danger to Emma and the baby, Daphne kills Nathan during a struggle. Why it matters: It clarifies her threshold—if you threaten her sisters, you forfeit your safety.
  • Framing Rick Hadley: Daphne retrieves the hidden weapon and flash drive and plants them in Rick’s garage. Why it matters: She doesn’t just erase threats; she writes the story that absolves her sisters, cementing her role as the family’s unseen author.

Essential Quotes

“You’re a peculiar child, aren’t you? Always watching.” This early observation captures Daphne’s baseline posture: vigilant, silent, and diagnostic. The line foreshadows how observation becomes her power—first to survive, then to orchestrate outcomes from the shadows.

“No one can know.” A mantra and a mission. This phrase defines Daphne’s moral universe: secrecy is both shield and weapon, allowing her to protect the family while constructing a reality that others must live inside.

“She worked better thinking of them not as people but as a series of problems to solve. It wasn’t to say that she was cold toward them—after all, emotional needs were another part of the puzzle.” Daphne reframes caregiving as systems management, revealing how she compartmentalizes empathy into solvable tasks. That same logic fuels her crimes: when people become “problems,” drastic solutions become thinkable.

“Everything I’ve done was to protect us. Protect you. All I’ve ever wanted is for my sisters to be safe.” Here Daphne articulates the love that underwrites her violence. The language of protection legitimizes extreme choices, letting her cast lethal acts as sacrificial, even tender.

“Maybe he didn’t deserve to die. Hardly anyone did, really. But some deserved it more than others. And something had to be done.” This is Daphne’s ethical calculus in miniature: a grim triage where necessity outranks innocence. The cool cadence—“something had to be done”—is the signature of a character who has traded personal salvation for control of the ending.