Marybeth Simonds

Quick Facts

• Role: Vengeful mastermind; secret antagonist
• First appearance: The unassuming receptionist at Coinstock
• Key relationships: Wife of Russell Simonds; loyal confidante of Douglas Garrick; nemesis of Wendy Garrick; strategic collaborator with Millie Calloway

Who They Are

Behind a bland smile and a receptionist’s desk, Marybeth Simonds hides a strategist’s brain and a survivor’s cold resolve. She is the story’s quiet fulcrum: an overlooked woman who turns grief into methodical vengeance. What begins as background texture—the pleasant wife answering phones—becomes the engine of the plot’s final turn, revealing how an ordinary exterior can mask extraordinary calculation. Marybeth is the embodiment of the underestimated woman, revealing how invisibility can be weaponized.

Physical Presence

Marybeth’s appearance is deliberately forgettable, a persona she crafts and uses as cover. Other characters clock her as dowdy and harmless, and she allows that misread to calcify—until it becomes fatal for them.

Early forties, blond hair that’s turning to gray, and a bland-looking face. She wears all these tacky skirts that are the absolute exact right length to make her calves look as wide as possible.

Her plainness isn’t accidental; it’s strategy. That visual camouflage sits squarely in the Appearance vs. Reality theme, where a “nonentity” turns out to be the person everyone should have feared.

Personality & Traits

Marybeth’s personality is the quiet kind that erases itself from the room—until the moment she chooses to take control. She reads people astutely, waits, and moves only when the outcome is assured. The result is a character whose restraint gives way to surgical brutality.

• Deceptive and cunning: She sustains the mask of a sweet, competent receptionist while orchestrating a double murder and planning to frame a third party. Her timing at the cabin, the forced confession, and the poison reveal meticulous foresight rather than impulsive rage.
• Vengeful and ruthless: Betrayal—of marriage and of her boss—calcifies into principle. She kills Russell without hesitation and engineers Wendy’s slow death, choosing a method that maximizes certainty and psychological punishment.
• Fiercely loyal: Everything she does is anchored in devotion to Douglas Garrick, whom she loved “like a brother.” His murder turns her from bystander to judge and executioner.
• Weaponizes being underestimated: Seen as a “doormat” by Wendy and dismissed by Russell, she cultivates that misperception as cover. Their fatal mistake is believing the role she performs rather than the woman she is.

Character Journey

Marybeth’s “arc” is less transformation than revelation. For most of the narrative she sits at the periphery—receptionist, wife, someone you pass in a lobby—and the reader adopts the cast’s casual disregard. In the final act, the story flips: Marybeth steps into view as the architect of the cabin confrontation, the author of Russell’s fate, and the arbiter of Wendy’s. The twist reassigns authorship of the plot’s central scheme to her, relocating the novel’s heart from spectacle to strategy and recasting Marybeth as the master of Deception and Manipulation. Her later cooperation with Millie is not sentimental but pragmatic: when justice requires a partner, she becomes one.

Key Relationships

• Russell Simonds: As his wife of twenty years, Marybeth knows the full extent of Russell’s infidelity and moral cowardice. Her killing of him is not a crime of passion but a ledger balanced—punishment for betraying their marriage and for his role in Douglas’s death. The intimacy of marriage gives her perfect access for the perfect crime.

• Douglas Garrick: Boss, friend, and moral anchor. Douglas’s murder is the catalyst for Marybeth’s plan, and her grief distills into a mission. Her loyalty—calling him “like a brother”—is the emotional core that justifies her otherwise chilling methods.

• Wendy Garrick: The target she wants to hurt slowly. Marybeth treats Wendy like a specimen in a controlled experiment—forcing a written confession, revealing the poison, and then stepping back to let inevitability work. Their final exchange exposes Marybeth’s precision and Wendy’s fatal arrogance.

• Millie Calloway: First a pawn in Wendy’s scheme, then Marybeth’s unlikely collaborator. When Millie seeks the truth, Marybeth recognizes aligned aims and supplies the digoxin pills that ensure Wendy’s end—an act that achieves mutual Justice and Revenge.

Defining Moments

Marybeth’s key scenes show how carefully she manipulates perception and consequence, turning small gestures into detonators.

• The business card “kindness”

  • What happens: In Coinstock’s lobby, she hands Wendy Russell’s business card, seemingly just being helpful.
  • Why it matters: That “innocent” gesture seeds Wendy’s plot—and lets Marybeth map the chain of guilt. It’s the first bead in the necklace she later tightens.

• Killing Russell

  • What happens: As part of her larger design, Marybeth eliminates her unfaithful husband.
  • Why it matters: This is principle over sentiment; she punishes betrayal at its source and removes the co-conspirator who enabled Douglas’s murder.

• The cabin confrontation

  • What happens: Marybeth reveals herself to Wendy, compels a written confession, and calmly discloses that Wendy has been poisoned.
  • Why it matters: The scene crystallizes her intelligence and control. She scripts the legal record and the moral outcome, ensuring Wendy’s end is both undeniable and slow.

• The final alliance with Millie

  • What happens: In the epilogue, we learn Millie sought out Marybeth, who provided digoxin from Brock Cunningham’s stash.
  • Why it matters: It reframes Marybeth not as a lone avenger but as a strategic ally when aims align, cementing her as the quiet power behind the narrative’s resolution.

Essential Quotes

Doug Garrick was a really good man—the best. He was like a brother to me. This line exposes the emotional engine of Marybeth’s violence: devotion. By elevating Douglas to family, she justifies extraordinary measures; her “justice” is born from grief, not opportunism.

I want you to write a confession... I want you to write down everything you did. How you seduced Russell. How the two of you conspired to kill your husband. I want a full confession. Demanding a written account is both legalistic and psychological. Marybeth ensures that the narrative will survive her, while forcing Wendy to name her own guilt—a final act of control before the poison takes hold.

You deserve worse. You are a truly despicable person. And you deserve to die in a painful and horrible way. Here Marybeth articulates her moral calculus: proportional suffering. It’s not random cruelty but a sentence, revealing how she frames herself not as murderer but as punisher.

And I promise... that your death will be slow and painful. And unlike you, I never break my promises. The promise underscores Marybeth’s defining contrast with Wendy: reliability versus betrayal. By turning “promise” into a weapon, she converts a virtue into the mechanism of revenge.