Opening
The story pivots to the unapologetic voice of Wendy Garrick, who coolly explains why killing her husband is, in her mind, entirely justified. Through her confession-and-guide hybrid, she recasts Douglas Garrick as a clueless, lovable nerd rather than a monster, and positions Millie Calloway as collateral damage in a larger, calculated scheme.
What Happens
Chapter 46: How to Get Away With Murdering Your Husband – A Guide by Wendy Garrick
Wendy breaks the fourth wall and calls herself whatever the reader likes—“terrible,” “heartless”—then shrugs it off. She insists Douglas never hits her, but he makes her life unbearable, so his death is “on him.” Millie? An “unfortunate casualty” in service of the “greater good.” Wendy declares she doesn’t care who judges her and launches her how-to on spousal murder, establishing a chilling, self-justifying tone and the novel’s deep dive into Deception and Manipulation.
Flash back four years: at a pretentious gallery show called Garments, Wendy hunts for Douglas—a “single, clueless, filthy rich” mark she has memorized from photos. She spots him immediately: shirt buttons misaligned, hair askew, appetite focused on the food. They banter about the art; she tries to sound insightful, then admits she doesn’t get it. He laughs and confesses he’s there for the appetizers. The door to his trust swings open. Wendy clocks how effortless the seduction will be and starts lining up her long game.
Chapter 47: Get Hitched to the Filthy Rich Man
One year later, they’re engaged—and Wendy is already exasperated. Douglas spoons Nutella straight from the jar and drags his feet about a high-society party, preferring superhero movies to schmoozing. She obsesses over optics; he doesn’t care. The gap between the glamorous life she craves and his down-to-earth habits widens, spotlighting the tension between polish and reality and surfacing the theme of Appearance vs. Reality.
The doorbell interrupts their argument. Joe Bendeck, Douglas’s lawyer and best friend, arrives. Wendy eavesdrops as Joe warns Douglas not to marry without a prenup. If the marriage fails, Wendy could claim half. Joe frames it as a litmus test: if she loves him, she’ll sign. Douglas balks; he trusts Wendy. But Joe’s logic prevails. Douglas agrees to present the prenup—an early sign that Wendy won’t get unfettered access to the fortune she targeted.
Chapter 48: [No Title]
Douglas brings flowers, a diamond necklace, and the prenup. In Joe’s office, Wendy stages a master class in wounded innocence—dabbing at her eyes, asking how Douglas can doubt her. Joe doesn’t flinch. He explains the terms: if they divorce, Wendy gets ten million dollars and nothing else of Douglas’s assets.
Privately, she calculates. Ten million isn’t half of an immense fortune, but it’s enough to live very well. Douglas apologizes but stands firm: no prenup, no wedding. Wendy signs, outwardly heartbroken and supportive, inwardly recalibrating. If the marriage ends in divorce, she’s capped at ten million; if it ends another way, the ceiling may not exist. She vows to make it last “till death do us part,” a phrase that starts to sound like a plan.
Chapter 49: Enjoy Married Life… For a Little While
Two years before the present, the couple shops for an apartment. Wendy pushes for a lavish penthouse; Douglas calls it wasteful—they already have a five-bedroom Long Island home. Both grew up poor; Douglas remains uneasy with ostentation and clings to practicality. She longs for visible, gleaming wealth as a hard-won correction to her past.
Wendy plays her strongest card: “future children.” The imaginary nursery softens Douglas every time. He relents and justifies the purchase as a tax strategy. Wendy secures her dream penthouse and studies her husband like a project—he’s “doughier,” unpolished, and in need of molding. The marriage looks glossy from the outside, but the power dynamics are already set: she maneuvers; he yields.
Chapter 50: [No Title]
Over lunch, Wendy and her gossip-prone friend Audrey discuss Ginger Howell’s messy divorce. Audrey credits a “cleaning woman” named Millie—yes, that Millie—as the clandestine protector of abused wives. Millie connects women to resources and lawyers and, when necessary, helps them disappear. The whispers go darker: in extreme cases, Audrey says, Millie has “taken the guy out,” and once served time for killing a man who tried to rape her friend.
A seed drops into Wendy’s mind: a powerful, secretive fixer with a vigilante streak could be the perfect pawn. The conversation drifts to Wendy’s struggles to conceive, a growing pressure point in her marriage. Wendy files the Millie intel away—an origin moment for a scheme that will eventually entangle justice with vengeance and introduce the theme of Justice and Revenge as raw material for Wendy’s self-serving plot.
Character Development
These chapters reframe the entire cast by handing the mic to Wendy and letting her curate the narrative.
- Wendy Garrick: A calculating strategist who treats marriage as a heist. Poverty hardens her into a status-obsessed perfectionist; she performs tenderness, tears, and maternal longing to control outcomes.
- Douglas Garrick: A kind, socially awkward, frugal man whose simplicity—misaligned buttons, Nutella spoon, superhero nights—makes him easy to manipulate and easier to miscast as a threat.
- Millie Calloway: A whispered legend in the city’s underbelly, known for protecting abused women and dispensing rough justice. In Wendy’s eyes, she becomes the ideal instrument for an elaborate frame.
Themes & Symbols
Deception and manipulation permeate every choice Wendy makes. She scripts emotions for effect, treats public image as currency, and bends domestic milestones—engagements, homes, “future children”—into pressure tactics. The prenup turns love into a ledger, forcing Wendy to consider death, not divorce, as the most profitable outcome.
Appearance versus reality sharpens in the contrast between the penthouse’s glossy façade and the marriage’s falseness, and between Douglas’s supposed monstrosity and his actual gentleness. Justice and revenge surface as rumor and mythology around Millie—noble in intent, dangerous in practice—only to be twisted by Wendy for profit. Symbols pile up: the misbuttoned shirt as Douglas’s harmlessness; the Nutella jar as cozy domesticity; the penthouse as a gleaming mask; the diamond necklace as gilded leverage.
Key Quotes
“His murder is entirely on him.” Wendy shifts moral blame onto the victim, announcing her ethic: outcomes matter more than accountability. The line flips the expected abuse narrative and signals her role as an unreliable narrator.
“I don’t understand the art either. I’m just here for the food.” Douglas’s candor at the gallery reveals his sincerity and social clumsiness. What reads as charm to Wendy reads as exploitable naiveté to her future self.
“If you really love him, you’ll sign the prenup.” Joe’s framing turns romance into a contract test. It plants the financial logic that makes murder, not divorce, the route to maximum gain.
“Till death do us part.” Wendy clings to the vow as strategy, not sentiment. The phrase foreshadows her pivot from performative wife to architect of a deadly endgame.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence delivers the novel’s central twist: the supposed victim-wife narrates a how-to on killing the husband she handpicked and molded. By switching to Wendy’s first-person voice, the book forces a total reevaluation of earlier “evidence” of abuse—now seen as planted, misread, or weaponized. The prenup becomes motive, the penthouse a stage set, and Millie’s legend the catalyst for a frame-up. These chapters lay the blueprint for the climactic showdown, clarifying why Wendy needs a dead husband, a perfect public image, and a patsy with a reputation for righteous violence.