CHARACTER
The Housemaid's Secretby Freida McFadden

Wendy Garrick

Wendy Garrick

Quick Facts

  • Role: Central antagonist; architect of the novel’s core deception
  • First appearance: In photographs (Chapter 6); in person in the penthouse guest room (Chapter 23)
  • Residence: The Garricks’ Manhattan penthouse, where she performs “illness” and abuse
  • Key relationships: Husband Douglas Garrick; housemaid Millie Calloway; lover/accomplice Russell Simonds; rival Marybeth Simonds (Douglas’s assistant and Russell’s wife)
  • Fate: Poisoned by Marybeth in the cabin (Chapter 72)

Who She Is

At first glance, Wendy Garrick is the picture of a frail, abused socialite hidden away by her powerful tech-CEO husband. That image is her greatest weapon. Behind the staged bruises and whispered pleas, she’s a meticulous strategist who builds a lethal fiction—luring Millie into a trap, choreographing a “murder,” and aiming to walk away with Douglas’s fortune. Wendy isn’t a character who changes; she’s a character who reveals, and the revelation is chilling: a master manipulator who treats empathy as leverage and marriage as a financial instrument.

Appearance & Presentation

Wendy’s body becomes a prop in her performance. Millie first sees a “stick-thin woman with long auburn hair” in mantle photos (Chapter 6) and later meets someone “downright emaciated,” with jutting collarbones and enormous green eyes (Chapter 23). The “injuries” in various stages of healing—paired with simple, stained nightgowns—are not wounds but cosmetics, a calculated costume that makes her story of abuse feel undeniable.

Personality & Traits

Wendy weaponizes perception. She reads people quickly, discovers their motives, and then scripts scenes that make her lies feel like the truth. Her traits aren’t random quirks—they’re the gears of her con.

  • Manipulative and deceptive: She studies Millie’s history and plays the helpless wife to exploit Millie’s savior complex, drip-feeding “proof” (the bruises, the secretive seclusion) to reel her in (Chapters 20, 23).
  • Cunning and meticulous: Her plan integrates research and logistics—recruiting Russell to impersonate Douglas, staging abuse with theatrical makeup, planting evidence, and prearranging a police-ready narrative (Part II; Chapter 46).
  • Ruthless and amoral: She feels no remorse for framing an innocent woman or arranging her husband’s death; people are tools or obstacles in the pursuit of money (Chapters 38, 55).
  • Greedy and materialistic: Her motive is explicitly financial—if Douglas divorces her for adultery, she gets nothing; if he dies, she gets everything (Chapter 55). The later will change (Chapter 68) exposes the emptiness of her pursuit.
  • Vain and controlling: She loathes Douglas’s “nerdy” habits, attempts to manage his image and lifestyle, and micro-manages the aesthetics of her own victimhood, down to the angle of a bruise and the stain on a nightgown.

Character Journey

Wendy’s “arc” is a mask dropping. The novel first primes readers to pity her: a whispering, shuttered wife with a “bruised” face, crying behind a locked door. Then Part II flips the lens. In “How to Get Away With Murdering Your Husband – A Guide by Wendy Garrick” (Chapter 46), she narrates the con with breezy confidence, reframing earlier scenes as set pieces. Her plan crests with the staged shooting (Chapter 38), only to unravel when she learns Douglas changed his will (Chapter 68). The final reversal—Marybeth’s revenge—turns Wendy’s own methods against her: private spaces, poisoned luxury, and a death she can’t outmaneuver (Chapter 72). She doesn’t transform; she’s exposed, then destroyed by the loyalty and love she discounted as weakness.

Key Relationships

  • Douglas Garrick: Wendy marries him for status and resents his lack of polish. When she learns the divorce terms and his charitable intentions, she treats murder as a financial pivot rather than a moral line (Chapters 55, 68). Their marriage is a study in contempt and control—she reduces Douglas to a ledger entry, then tries to close the account permanently.

  • Millie Calloway: Wendy handpicks Millie as the perfect patsy: a housemaid with a history of protecting abused women. By letting Millie “discover” the bruises and issuing carefully crafted warnings, she turns Millie’s empathy into evidence for a crime scene (Chapters 20, 23, 38). Millie is both audience and prop in Wendy’s theater of victimhood.

  • Russell Simonds: As lover and accomplice, Russell is valuable precisely because he can impersonate Douglas—handsome, malleable, nervous enough to be managed. Wendy reads his hesitation as weakness and plans around it, but underestimates the moral and emotional fallout that radiates into Marybeth’s life (Chapters 38, 46).

  • Marybeth Simonds: Wendy’s most catastrophic misread. She dismisses Marybeth as a “doormat,” blind to her competence, loyalty to the real Douglas, and capacity for decisive, morally charged anger. Marybeth’s poisoning of Wendy reclaims agency from a woman who thought she controlled every script (Chapter 72).

Defining Moments

A character built on performance is defined by scenes—and why she stages them.

  • The “bruised” face reveal (Chapter 20)

    • What happens: Wendy lets Millie see her “injuries,” confirming the abuse narrative.
    • Why it matters: It’s the linchpin of Wendy’s credibility; the moment Millie’s instinct to rescue overrides skepticism.

  • The staged murder (Chapter 38)

    • What happens: Millie shoots Russell, believing he’s Douglas; the gun is loaded with blanks.
    • Why it matters: Wendy manufactures a perfect crime scene and scapegoat, turning Millie into circumstantial proof.

  • Narrative shift to Wendy’s POV (Part II; Chapter 46)

    • What happens: The novel reveals Wendy’s playbook in her own words.
    • Why it matters: Sympathy flips to horror; the reader realizes prior “evidence” was production design.

  • Motive spelled out (Chapter 55)

    • What happens: Wendy explains the financial calculus—divorce with adultery pays nothing; death pays everything.
    • Why it matters: Strips away romance and grievance to show money as the core engine of her choices.

  • The will revelation (Chapter 68)

    • What happens: Lawyer Joe Bendeck informs Wendy that Douglas changed his will, cutting her out.
    • Why it matters: Her victory collapses; the con’s payoff is empty, triggering panic and reckless moves.

  • Death in the cabin (Chapter 72)

    • What happens: Marybeth reveals she poisoned the wine; Wendy dies slowly.
    • Why it matters: Poetic justice—Wendy’s tools (privacy, performance, luxury) are turned against her.

Symbolism

Wendy personifies Appearance vs. Reality: her entire identity is a costume designed to redirect everyone’s gaze. She also embodies Deception and Manipulation, treating lies as strategy and moral claims as exploitable tells. In a world of wealth and image, she’s the cautionary emblem of how perfectly curated suffering can hide predation.

Essential Quotes

You must think I’m a terrible person. Would it help if I said that while Douglas never laid a finger on me, he was a terrible husband? He humiliated me and made my life miserable... This did not need to end in his murder. That’s entirely on him. And Millie? Well, she is an unfortunate casualty. But she’s not quite as sweet as you might think. If she spends her life behind bars, it’s for the greater good.
— Wendy Garrick’s internal monologue (Chapter 46)

This confession crystallizes Wendy’s moral inversion: she reframes murder as Douglas’s fault and casts Millie’s potential life sentence as “greater good.” The rhetoric of victimhood becomes a smokescreen for self-interest, revealing how she justifies violence by pathologizing other people’s virtues.

“Listen to me, Millie,” she says in a low voice. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. You do not want to get involved with this situation. You need to walk away and leave me be.”
— Wendy playing the terrified victim (Chapter 20)

The warning operates as bait. By pretending to push Millie away, Wendy intensifies Millie’s resolve to help, making Millie’s intervention feel like her own choice—an elegant piece of reverse psychology that cements the savior narrative.

If Douglas divorces me with proof of my adultery, I get nothing. But if he is dead, according to his will, I get everything.
— Wendy on motive (Chapter 55)

Here, Wendy reduces marriage to math. The blunt legal calculus exposes her values: love, dignity, and truth are irrelevant next to inheritance, turning homicide into a spreadsheet solution.