Vanessa McCrorey

Quick Facts

• Role: Mother of Eeden McCrorey and Caelin McCrorey; a catalyst for the novel’s central conflict and a symbol of adult denial
• First appearance: The morning after Eden’s assault, entering Eden’s bedroom
• Key relationships: Daughter Eden McCrorey, son Caelin McCrorey, family friend Kevin Armstrong

Who They Are

Vanessa McCrorey is a polished suburban mother whose obsession with order and appearances blinds her to the crisis unfolding in her own home. In the novel’s most crucial moment, she mistakes Eden’s post-assault devastation for an ordinary milestone and responds not with care but with cleaning supplies and impatience. From that point forward, she becomes the wall Eden cannot scale—a figure who looks “taller than she ever has before,” not because she’s strong, but because she’s unreachable. As a character, Vanessa embodies the social reflex to tidy up what should be confronted, making her a powerful emblem of Trauma, Silence, and Secrecy.

Personality & Traits

Vanessa’s defining feature is a cultivated blindness—she sees what preserves normalcy and ignores what disrupts it. Her “solutions” are cosmetic: straighten the room, adjust the schedule, redirect the conversation. This keeps the family’s surface intact while deepening Eden’s isolation.

• Oblivious and self-preserving: She immediately misreads the blood on Eden’s sheets as a first period, offering soothing platitudes instead of questions. The mistake is less ignorance than preference; she chooses the easiest explanation.
• Image-obsessed: She calls the aftermath “this mess” and insists on cleaning it before anyone else sees, prioritizing what the family looks like over what the family is.
• Dismissive, impatient authority: She interrupts Eden, pushing her toward the shower and out of the conversation. Eden recognizes the familiar holiday-rush look that shuts down anything inconvenient.
• Caelin-centric: With Caelin gone, “Mom doesn’t know what to do with herself,” and she projects that absence onto Eden, mislabeling Eden’s withdrawal as jealousy rather than pain.
• Monolithic presence: In the robe-handing scene, Eden sees her as towering and unapproachable—authority without intimacy.
• Quietly brittle: Eden later finds gin hidden in the spice cabinet, suggesting Vanessa copes in secret, shoring up the façade rather than addressing what threatens it.

Character Journey

Vanessa remains largely static: a polished surface Eden keeps colliding with. But as Eden asserts herself—first in small rebellions, then in open defiance—the surface cracks. The “contacts” argument explodes into a slap, laying bare a relationship built on misrecognition and control. The hidden gin hints at a private unraveling: Vanessa is not simply cruel; she’s frightened of disorder and medicates that fear. Only when the truth about Kevin’s assaults, including those against Amanda Armstrong, becomes undeniable does Vanessa enter the family’s pain rather than manage it. In those final scenes, she is no longer orchestrating appearances but clinging to her husband and comforting Caelin—an imperfect, late shift from performance to participation.

Key Relationships

• Eden McCrorey: Vanessa’s failure to see and believe her daughter shapes Eden’s internal world. By “offering a lie [Eden] didn’t even need to think up,” she becomes a collaborator in the silence that erodes Eden’s identity, feeding the theme of Identity and the Loss of Self. What Eden needs—attention, protection, belief—Vanessa replaces with rules, judgments, and a brisk tidying away of anything painful.

• Caelin McCrorey: Caelin is the gravitational center of Vanessa’s emotional universe. With him gone, she flails, and her conversations orbit him as if he were the family’s purpose. Eden is rendered secondary—not the person to be known, but the problem to be managed—deepening the rift between mother and daughter.

• Kevin Armstrong: Vanessa treats Kevin like family—“always welcome”—and that unquestioning warmth is precisely why Eden believes she won’t be believed. Vanessa’s hospitality becomes complicity: her affection for Kevin creates a climate where his presence is unquestioned and his danger invisible.

Defining Moments

Vanessa’s most telling moments show her turning away from truth in favor of control—until the truth forces itself in.

• The morning after the assault: She misreads the scene as a first period, interrupts Eden, and insists on cleaning “this mess.” Why it matters: This single response forecloses Eden’s disclosure and sets years of silence in motion.
• The argument over contacts: A practical request becomes a battle for recognition; Vanessa slaps Eden. Why it matters: The slap externalizes what has long been true—Vanessa’s authority trumps Eden’s voice—and reveals how cosmetic “solutions” conceal deeper harm.
• The hidden gin: Eden finds gin in the spice cabinet. Why it matters: Vanessa’s façade depends on secret coping, suggesting her control is a performance that requires numbing to maintain.
• The final revelation: Police expose Kevin’s assaults, including against Amanda Armstrong; Vanessa comforts Caelin and turns to her husband. Why it matters: For once, she doesn’t tidy or explain—she absorbs. It’s not redemption, but it’s a step away from denial toward shared grief.

Essential Quotes

"Oh, Edy.” She sighs, turning her head at me with a sad smile. “It’s okay.”
“Wh—” I start to say. How can it be okay, in what world is this okay?
“This happens sometimes when you’re not expecting it.”

Vanessa rushes to a comforting script that rewrites a crisis as a rite of passage. The tenderness (“Edy,” “sweetie”) becomes chilling because it greases the lie, teaching Eden that comfort will be offered only if the truth is sanitized.

“Why don’t you hop in the shower, sweetie?” she interrupts. “I’ll take care of this . . . uh . . . ,” she begins, gesturing with her arm in a wide circle over my bed, searching for the word, “this mess.”

The gesture and the search for a word expose Vanessa’s priorities: remove the visible evidence, restore order. Calling it “this mess” reduces trauma to a housekeeping problem, turning the bedroom into a stage to be reset rather than a site of harm to be addressed.

Then my mom shakes the robe at me, offering me a lie I didn’t even need to think up. She starts getting that look in her eye—that impatient, it’s-the-holidays-and-I-don’t-have-time-for-this look. Clearly, it was time for me to get going so she could deal with this mess.

The robe becomes a prop of denial—Vanessa physically hands Eden the narrative to hide behind. Her seasonal impatience frames trauma as an inconvenience to the family calendar, reinforcing the hierarchy: schedule first, truth later (or never).

“I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, Eden. And I don’t know what has gotten into you lately, but it stops right now!”

Here, Vanessa asserts authority without curiosity. The demand to “stop right now” is about restoring control, not understanding change; it crystallizes how her parenting prioritizes obedience over recognition, accelerating the breakdown between mother and daughter.