payment page
Summary: Chapters 4–7
Chapter 4: Think What You Want
Hannah and Jules drink coffee with bourbon. A photo editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, Jules has known Hannah since they were teens. Hannah wants to know how Owen’s disappearance could possibly be Jules’s fault, and her friend replies that a coworker, Max, had tipped her off to The Shop’s legal problem. He had a scoop that the FBI was about to raid the firm because the company had misrepresented both its product and its financial standing. Neither of them thinks Owen would be involved in illegal activity, but they also find it hard to believe that, as chief coder, he would have been unaware of what was happening. His investments in The Shop are likely worthless, Hannah realizes. Jules said she tipped Owen off about the raid, and he did not seem surprised by the news.
Chapter 5: Twenty-Four Hours Earlier
In a flashback to the previous day, Hannah and Owen snuggle under a blanket. Their routine includes talking about their favorite part of the day. Hannah shares her plan to surprise Bailey with the pasta dish. Owen promises to leave work early to help Hannah cook, reassuring Hannah that Bailey will come to love her in time. Even though she chides him for always picking the present moment, Owen still tells Hannah that his favorite part of the day was when they got under the blanket together.
Chapter 6: Follow the Money
Jules is relieved to hear that Hannah has her own bank account, since authorities will likely freeze Owen’s accounts. Despite their longstanding friendship, Hannah does not tell Jules about the bag of money, aware of how guilty it makes Owen look. Even with the circumstantial evidence mounting against him, Hannah feels sure that Owen only left to protect Bailey. Still, as she was abandoned by her mother as a child, Hannah is deeply upset by Owen’s departure and turns over recent events in her mind, wondering whether there were signs she overlooked.
The next morning, an angry Bailey asserts that her father’s note must have a deeper meaning, although she does not know what it is. One thing is clear to her, though—her father is not coming back. Bailey does not want to go to school, but Hannah insists. Her attempts at comforting the angry young woman fail.
Chapter 7: Help Is on the Way
A stranger sitting on the porch disrupts Hannah’s musings about her uneasy place in the house. He introduces himself as US Marshal Grady Bradford and, unsurprisingly, he is urgently looking for Owen. What is more surprising, though, is his conviction that Owen was not involved in the illegal activities at The Shop. Despite Hannah’s prodding, he does not explain why he wants to speak to Owen. The two walk to get coffee and she recounts the previous day’s events, leaving out Owen’s notes and the bag of money. Grady seems already to know these details and accuses her of withholding information that would help him protect Owen. Encouraging her to retain a lawyer as many people will contact her for information from her, Grady shares both the name of a friend who can help secure Hannah’s custody of Bailey and his contact information. As they part, Grady ominously warns her that Owen is not who she thinks.
Analysis
Across these chapters, the importance of interpreting the real meaning of a message or action becomes apparent to the characters. Hannah openly wonders if she missed signs about Owen just as she did when her mother left. In contrast, she and Jules read each other well, with Hannah understanding that Jules’s body language indicates discomfort at revealing painful information about Owen. Jules also reads Owen easily, realizing that he knows about the illegal activity at his company from his lack of surprise at her warning. She can also tell that Hannah is not lying about her own knowledge because her responses are those of someone who genuinely does not know rather than someone hiding information. Bailey herself also surmises that Owen’s note to her contains an underlying message she needs to decipher. Characters must be able to intuit the underlying meaning of others’ words and actions to solve the mystery about Owen. As the novel progresses, Hannah and Bailey practice even more elaborate examples of reading meaning into actions and words than what occurs here. These early scenes, however, foreshadow that they will be up to the task.
Secrets dominate this section as the characters withhold information, although their reasons for doing so vary. Hannah realizes that Owen has kept much from her, and she has difficulty reconciling this fact with their intimacy. Although she trusts Jules, Hannah nonetheless withholds the fact that Owen left money. Jules, meanwhile, conceals from her coworker Max that she tipped off Owen about the raid. Her ties to Hannah outweigh the relationship she has with him. Grady and Hannah do not trust each other, but she provides a relatively accurate description of the previous day to him. She keeps secrets, though, by not disclosing the money or mentioning the notes that Owen has left. She does so to protect Owen and Bailey. Likewise, when Hannah shares her day with Owen, she talks honestly about her eagerness to please Bailey. He, however, avoids talking about his day or future plans. The favorite moment he mentions to Hannah is from only a minute earlier, a moment that they already shared with each other. Owen skirts around the rules for the ritual, keeping Hannah in the dark. Even in a ritual to create intimacy, Owen manages to be quite distant, a reticence that becomes more sinister in light of his lies.
In these chapters, surveillance of characters ominously hangs over the narrative. Owen’s work is in protecting online privacy, so his job ostensibly helps people avoid digital surveillance. Nevertheless, surveillance appears as an inescapable fact of life. Grady signals his own greater knowledge of Owen by warning Hannah that Owen is not who he seems. He also repeatedly demonstrates how much he knows about Hannah in their first meeting, even offering her a cup of her regular coffee order. On the surface, Grady’s gesture appears thoughtful, but his surveillance also offers an implied threat. He later suggests Hannah knows more than she reveals, and just as he found out how she takes her coffee, he can find out more about her if she will not be forthcoming. All his actions signal his control of the situation. He withholds the full weight of his authority as a federal law enforcement officer because he can, trusting that Hannah will be perceptive enough to intuit the implied threat that he can become much more aggressive and significantly less amiable if she does not cooperate.
