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Summary: Chapters 16–18
Chapter 16: Little White Churches
At the last church on their list, Hannah and Bailey talk with Elenor, the church secretary, hoping that she will share information about weddings performed during Longhorn home games in 2008. Hannah has downloaded a schedule of the season to make the search easier, but the secretary is reluctant to release personal information. Noting the family photographs on Elenor’s desk, Hannah appeals her sense of family. When Elenor reluctantly agrees to try to help, the gambit pays off.
While they are there, Hannah receives a text from Carl, who is at the houseboat looking for her. They talk on the phone, and he immediately apologizes for Patty’s behavior, admitting that what she believes about their money is not true. He actually spent their savings on his mistress. Although they were close, the only thing he can tell Hannah is that Owen had been frustrated at work. As they hang up, Hannah sternly informs him that he must tell Patty the truth about the money—or she will. Hannah is immediately greeted with more unpleasant news, as Elenor says that there were no weddings at the church during the 2008 football season because it had been closed for renovations. This news upsets Bailey, whose memories have become sharper since arriving in Austin. Bailey storms off and, as Hannah sets out to follow her, Elenor promises to call her with any further information. She adds, much to Hannah’s annoyance, a caustic judgment about Owen’s character.
Chapter 17: Not Everyone Is a Good Helper
Back at the hotel, Bailey falls asleep and Hannah wonders what else to do to help her stepdaughter remember. A call from Jake interrupts her musings. The private investigator can find no trace of an Owen Michaels matching Hannah’s description before 2009, the year he and Bailey moved to Sausalito. According to Jake, people use false identities for two reasons: they are living a double life or they have been involved in criminal activity. Hannah has difficulty processing this information and dreads sharing it with Bailey. He suggests to Hannah that she and Bailey come to New York, even offering to let them stay with him. Hannah rejects this offer and his advice that she stop searching for information about Owen, but listens attentively when he counsels her to remember how her actions affect Bailey.
Chapter 18: Eight Months Ago
In another flashback, Hannah recalls a difficult San Francisco outing with Owen and Bailey to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Bailey had agreed to join them for dim sum but then balked and pouted at having to go to a flea market as well. As they wander through the maze of booths, a man interrupts them, insisting that Owen was the prom king at his Texas high school. Owen laughs it off, because he went to high school in Massachusetts.
Analysis
This section presents memory as something that characters must construct. Indeed, memory’s power in the story largely derives from the fact that characters must create meaning from it to inform their lives. Hannah and Bailey actively probe their memories to bring forth long-forgotten events that never seemed unimportant, as their interactions with other people and their surroundings trigger additional memories and reshape the way they interpret the memories they have already recalled. Hannah’s flashback chapters resonate differently as she learns more about her husband. At this point in the novel, Bailey’s memories appear inaccurate, and Hannah’s memory suggests something sinister about Owen, but it is all really a matter of interpretation and context. As the characters and readers uncover more about Owen’s background, they can place their memories in more accurate contexts. Note, for example, that in a later chapter, Elenor validates Bailey’s memory of attending a wedding at the church. When memories appear flawed in the novel, the problem is often not the memory itself but rather that the characters interpret it incorrectly or lack the proper context to understand it.
In this section, characters struggle with moral judgments that complicate their interactions. Hannah resents Elenor’s judgments about Owen fleeing his family, though she provokes Carl with a similar judgment about his own dishonesty with his wife. Hannah chooses to perceive the lies Owen has told her as lies for a greater good, despite disturbing new revelations about their extent. Still, she distinguishes between Owen’s lies and Carl’s obviously self-serving lies. Dave interrogates the fairness of judgment with this juxtaposition. Carl’s lies to Patty seem unjustifiable, but Owen’s significant lies to his family are also inexplicable. Hannah reveals an innate hypocrisy in insisting that Bailey should direct her anger at her father rather than Elenor before herself becoming angry at Elenor for judging Owen. Hannah’s position is that Elenor lacks the context to fairly judge Owen, though she herself also lacks the context to defend him adequately. Though Hannah is the narrator and the text supports her view of Owen, readers do not need to accept her opinions uncritically, without considering how her biases introduce errors in her thinking.
In thrillers and detective narratives, characters are regularly sidetracked by ultimately insignificant red herring clues. Hannah and Bailey repeatedly experience their leads backfiring on them in these chapters. Red herrings serve several purposes in thrillers. One purpose is simply ensuring the hunt for clues is interesting, so that the final revelation of the truth is more rewarding because it has not been too straightforward or easy to grasp. Red herrings also generate conflict. Here, the apparent red herring about the church records fuels Bailey’s frustration. As the novel later reveals, her church memory was not wrong, which adds a further twist to the narrative. It also further develops the novel’s depiction of knowledge as a messy endeavor.
