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Summary
Part III
Chapter Fifty-One: Millie
Still locked in the attic, Millie calls out for Andrew. She reasons that Andrew must have locked the door absent-mindedly while half-asleep. She turns on the light and finds her phone gone, and three textbooks are lying in the middle of the floor. She thinks she must have forgotten her phone downstairs, and manages to fall back asleep until morning.
When Andrew’s voice wakes her the next morning, she expects him to immediately let her out. Instead, he tells her in a strange voice that the day before, she had taken a few of his books off the shelf and left them on the coffee table. She offers to clean them up, but he says it’s too late. He won’t open the door until she places the three heavy textbooks on her stomach and balances them for three straight hours. She asks if she can at least go to the bathroom before they discuss this, and he tells her she can go in the bucket. She pretends to balance the books, but he knows she’s lying, and Millie realizes he’s been watching her for weeks. She bangs on the door, and just as he told Nina, he says he’ll let her out, just not yet.
Chapter Fifty-Two: Millie
Millie uses the bucket to urinate, and then drinks two of the three bottles of water, which she instantly regrets. She tries to balance the books on her stomach, but it’s deeply uncomfortable, and she pushes them off almost immediately. Andrew tells her she needs to do it for three hours or she’s not getting out, and she asks if he would really let her die in here. He says once she runs out of water, she’ll realize what she has to do. And he’s right; once she begins dreaming of waterfalls, she relents and balances the books again for three hours, which is extremely painful and leaves bruises. She pushes them off her at exactly the three-hour mark, but Andrew says she stopped a minute too early, so she has to start over again. She says she has no water left, and he says next time, she’ll learn to conserve it. When she says there won’t be a next time, he says if she tries to leave, he’ll say she stole from them and she’ll be sent back to jail.
This time, she balances the books for three hours and ten minutes, just to be safe. Half an hour later, Andrew opens the door, and she reflects that hearing that lock turn was better than getting out of prison. He tells her she needed to learn a lesson, and shows her the app on his phone, which shows a crystal-clear image of them in the attic. She has no intention of being locked in the attic again, so she takes out the pepper spray she found in the bucket.
Chapter Fifty-Three: Nina
When Nina hired a private investigator to look into Millie’s past, she found out Millie had a long history of vigilante violence. She went to prison because, while at boarding school, she found a boy raping one of her friends and smashed his skull with a paperweight. Although she was defending her friend, she took a plea to lesser charges due to the excessive nature of the violence and previous incidents from her childhood. She was expelled from school after breaking a bully’s arm, and she slashed her math teacher’s tires after he gave her a failing grade. She was also fired from her waitressing job because she punched a co-worker. Nina hired her to kill Andy, even if Millie didn’t know it.
Chapter Fifty-Four: Millie
When Millie pepper sprays Andrew, he screams and drops his phone. She picks it up, leaves the room, and uses the key Nina gave her to lock it from the outside. As Andrew screams at her to let him out, she recalls the adrenaline she felt right before killing her friend’s rapist in high school. She says she will let him out, just not yet. She leaves him there and makes herself a bologna sandwich, using Andrew’s phone to watch him in the attic. His mother texts him about whether he’s divorcing Nina, and she texts back so his mother doesn’t get suspicious. Evelyn says she never liked Nina, and that she tried with Cecelia, but she became a spoiled brat. Millie feels a rush of sympathy for both Nina and Cecelia.
Millie returns to Andrew and tells him to apologize for what he did to her. He reluctantly complies, but she says he still needs to be punished for what he did. He tells her she doesn’t have the stomach to play this game, but he has no idea what she’s capable of. She orders him to balance the books on his stomach, just as she had to, but since he’s larger than her, it doesn’t hurt. She tells him to move the books down and balance them on his genitals. He moves the books, and is in severe pain. She tells him to stay that way for the next three hours.
Chapter Fifty-Five: Millie
Millie thinks about Nina. She thought Nina was the crazy one, but now Millie assumes Andrew locked her in the attic too, maybe many times. She suspects that Nina was never jealous, it was all just an act. She wants to call Nina, but she remembers how her former best friend never spoke to her again after Millie killed her rapist. She also remembers that her parents didn’t stand up for her when her math teacher failed her because she wouldn’t let him touch her sexually. And she remembers how she got fired from her job for punching a bartender who sexually harassed her. She doesn’t trust anyone but herself.
After three hours, Andrew pushes the books off his genitals and tells Millie if she doesn’t let him out, he’s going to kill her. Millie wonders if any women have died in that room. She tells him she didn’t say three hours, she actually said five hours, so he has to start over. He offers her money, but when she doesn’t relent, he asks if he can at least have some water. She says he should have left more for her if he wanted some for himself, and Googles how long a person can live without water.
Analysis: Fifty-One—Fifty-Five
In Part Three of the narrative, we begin to shift between Millie and Nina's perspectives. While the entire novel has hinged on the limits of perspective, we are now able to place all of the important information in context, particularly concerning Millie. While earlier in the story, Millie's history of violence is presented as a red flag, we now learn that her violent actions were always in defense of herself or others against abuse. Similar to Nina, this reframing reveals Millie not as an aggressor but as someone pushed to extremes by circumstances and injustice.
Chapters Fifty-One and Fifty-Two illustrate Andrew's control through his literal shifting of goalposts, such as telling Millie she missed the three-hour mark by a minute or adding extra tasks for Nina to complete. This behavior serves as a way to assert his dominance and reinforce his power over them. Both women respond by going above and beyond his arbitrary demands—Millie balances the books for ten extra minutes, while Nina, when previously subjected to similar tactics, also overcompensated with ten extra hairs. This response shows how Andrew essentially "trains" them to become hyper-vigilant to his whims, eroding their sense of agency and reinforcing his control.
These chapters center on correcting false assumptions and unraveling the characters' misconceptions about each other. Millie re-evaluates her judgment of Nina, realizing that Nina might have been a victim of Andrew's abuse all along. This recognition reframes Nina's actions not as those of a jealous, manipulative woman, but as a desperate attempt to escape a violent situation. Conversely, Andrew is forced to confront how he has grossly underestimated Millie. He learns, to his shock, that she is not just a simple maid but a formidable adversary who can turn his own tactics against him. Millie mirrors his methods, shifting the goalposts by claiming she actually said five hours instead of three, and using the phrase "I'll let you out, just not yet" to make him despair and maintain dominance. Andrew's attempt to offer her money underscores his inability to accept his loss of control. He still sees Millie as a mere maid, assuming he can buy his way back to power, even when he's imprisoned. This reinforces how the power dynamics have constantly shifted over the course of the novel; all three of them have at different points used these sadistic methods against each other.
These chapters more directly introduce the theme of misogynistic violence. Millie’s history of violence has been consistently tied to instances of sexual abuse, and her decision to force Andrew to harm his genitals is a significant reversal, highlighting the impact of the sexual violence she has witnessed and suffered. Initially, Millie’s story focused on themes of class disparity, but as the narrative shifts perspectives and reveals the solidarity between Millie and Nina, Andrew is firmly established as the true villain. This shift brings misogyny and feminism to the forefront, emphasizing the struggle of both women to escape the cycles of abuse and misogynistic violence.
Read an explanation of a quote (#1) about the theme of manipulation and psychological control.
