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Summary: Chapters 8–12
Chapter 8: These Are Not Your Friends
Leaving the house with her husband’s laptop, Hannah stops to see Owen’s friend, Carl Conrad. Carl and his wife Patty hide from her and Hannah realizes they are hosting a child’s birthday party. Hannah’s unwillingness to leave finally draws Patty out of the house, furiously yelling that Owen stole the Conrads’ money. Their savings were invested in The Shop’s now-worthless stock, Patty fumes, and she is sure that Hannah and Owen manipulated them into financial ruin. Even though she believes Carl wants to talk to her, Hannah leaves because Patty makes it abundantly clear she is not welcome.
Hannah arrives at her workshop. Rather than working, she searches the laptop for clues. She finds photographs of Bailey’s mother Olivia, encoded work files, and Owen’s will, but none of this helps her to figure out where Owen has gone. Two FBI agents, Jeremy O’Mackey and Naomi Wu, interrupt her, seeking information about Owen’s whereabouts. They disclose that Avett’s wife Belle has tried, unsuccessfully, to flee. The agents are eager to talk to Bailey, but Hannah directs them to her New York attorney Jake Anderson, who they must consult for access to Owen’s daughter. The FBI agents see no reason why a US Marshal would be involved and suggest to Hannah that Grady may be a fraud.
Chapter 9: Don’t Hold This Against Me
As Hannah returns home, she feels the weight of people’s pitying stares, a sentiment that reminds her of the judgmental, suspicious looks that followed her when she first arrived in Sausalito. She calls Jake, her lawyer and former fiancé. Their conversation is tense, but he is less certain than the FBI agents are that Grady is a fraud. Although Hannah persists in thinking that Owen is innocent and fled to protect Bailey, Jake is skeptical. He promises to have Owen’s past investigated and advises her to stop insisting on Owen’s innocence in public.
Chapter 10: Six Weeks Ago
Hannah recalls that she had suggested a short vacation to Austin, Texas, in tandem with a symposium she was to attend. He demurs, suggesting New Mexico instead, a place he visited once during college. When she wonders about the lengthy drive to the southwest from New Jersey, he becomes vague and distant.
Chapter 11: Bailey’s No Good Very Bad Day
Bailey returns from a disastrous day during which her classmates gossiped incessantly about The Shop. Promising that she can stay home tomorrow, Hannah tries to distract Bailey by bringing up Owen’s note. Because Owen had written that she should remember, perhaps Bailey’s memories are critical, Hannah surmises. She calls the number Grady gave her and is surprised when it connects to the US Marshal Service’s Austin office. As they discuss this bit of information, Bailey recalls a faint childhood memory, involving the color orange, a football stadium, and a wedding in Austin. Although Hannah is eager for more details, an agitated Bailey wants to be left alone.
Chapter 12: What Don’t You Want to Remember?
The Austin connection strikes Hannah as significant, especially as she remembers that Owen had reacted oddly to a commission she was offered in Austin shortly before their marriage. She phones Jake, an avid football fan, asking about the team colors of the University of Texas. The late call irritates him, but he nonetheless shares that her they are orange and white. Hannah finds Bailey, who is sneaking a glass of wine, and tells her to pack for Austin, ignoring the teen’s transgression.
Analysis
These chapters focus on what it means to be—or feel—at home by highlighting how ill at ease these characters have become. Hannah feels like an outsider where she lives, both in the town and in the houseboat. Ordinarily, Bailey feels secure and comfortable, but in these chapters her classmates’ gossip upsets her, and she feels ostracized and judged, just like Hannah. Their unease offers a powerful motive for them to flee a place that no longer feels like home for one that neither knows. Being anonymous in Austin, free from others’ judgments, holds a powerful appeal for them. Ultimately and ironically, Hannah and Bailey eventually come to better appreciate the houseboat and Sausalito as home during their time in Austin, but only after they have experienced the darker side of being in a strange place.
In these chapters, the desire for control, often through routines, shapes various characters’ actions. Hannah recalls how fanatical Carl and Patty are about following a schedule for their daughter and is embarrassed when she realizes that she is interrupting the child’s birthday party. Owen’s disappearance has disrupted Hannah’s routine, and she continues to face intrusions in her life via the FBI agents who drop by to interrogate her. These disruptions are not just a minor inconvenience but instead a means through which these characters lose any semblance of control in their lives. Each copes with this loss differently. Patty reacts with fury, blaming Owen and even Hannah for the disorder in her life. Hannah tries to save face, attempting to be polite with both Patty and the FBI agents while also not telling them everything she knows. Her selective release of information is a means of asserting a little control over the situation. Even the FBI agents are caught off guard when Hannah mentions Grady’s visit with her. They also attempt to establish control over the situation by insisting he must be an impostor and that Hannah should not trust him.
Lies, deceptions, and secrets permeate the relationships among all the characters. Though Owen’s apparent lies to Hannah are the central focus of the novel, this section reveals that deceptions are hardly exclusive to Hannah and Owen’s relationship. Lies also shape Carl and Patty’s dynamic and Jake and Hannah’s. For these characters, believing their chosen lies, that Carl is a faithful husband and that the breakup of Hannah and Jake’s engagement was all her fault, is preferable to acknowledging the truth. Similarly, Hannah struggles to reconcile her love for Owen with his lies and wonders if she is just deluding herself because she wants to believe he is innocent. Dave suggests with these episodes that relationships often hinge on the narratives that people choose to believe. A lie sometimes offers a more powerful incentive for staying together than recognizing a much less pleasant truth. These plot points introduce one of the novel’s key storylines and thematic explorations: the question of how much truth about themselves, their lives, and their relationships people can really know and even accept.
As is often true in thrillers, Hannah and Bailey struggle with how to interpret the facts they have. Much of this difficulty comes from the biases they have for what they think they know. Hannah’s flashbacks to past experiences with Owen take on a different meaning in light of his disappearance. What previously seemed like odd but minor out-of-character moments from Owen accrue more nefarious meanings once Hannah realizes he may have a hidden connection to Austin. Before this moment, both Hannah’s memories of Owen avoiding Texas and Bailey’s early memories of attending a wedding and a college football game in Austin seemed insignificant and unrelated to Owen’s disappearance. To figure out what happened, the characters must realize that often the most significant clues are those that appear unimportant or tangential. Ironically, by setting aside their biases about what they think they know, the characters are better able to move forward, understanding what they actually do know and accurately interpreting its meaning and significance.
