All the Missing Girls

“And later that night, sometime between the fair closing and six A.M., Corinne disappeared, and everything that had happened that day took on new weight, new meaning.”

The book’s plot largely revolves around the night of Corinne’s disappearance, and, we find out later, death. So much took place that night: the Ferris wheel, Daniel’s punch, and all of the unexpected moments in between. Nic consistently revisits this scene from different angles, piecing together the perspectives of the friend group and from Annaleise, in order to make sense of what happened to Corinne. 

“I looked at his hands, at the dirt caked under the nails, at the thin line of dried blood running between his thumb and pointer finger.”

Just before the police show up at the Farrell residence, Tyler walks through the back door to say he’s found a body in a field. His appearance implies he has committed the murder, and we have to wait the length of the book before this is disproved. It also leaves Nic and Tyler’s relationship in limbo, as we are unsure how they have come to be in contact in such a moment of urgency and anxiety.

“I could picture Annaleise standing there, like when she was a kid. A bystander to the story, watching other lives play out.”

Nic is going through Annaleise’s laptop after stealing it from her apartment. She imagines what Annaleise must have seen and thought the night of the fair. At the time, Nic took it for granted that Annaleise was a witness and the one person outside the friend group who knew and saw everything unfurl. Annaleise’s voyeurism helps Nic understand how the drama might have appeared to a third party and someone slightly removed from Corinne’s control over the group.

“My past [is] just a list of facts, not something that ever truly existed for him.”

At this point, Nic is beginning to realize that Everett cannot understand her, and possibly never will. He thinks that because Nic has never mentioned Corinne, that Corinne couldn’t have been that important to her. She finds herself having to backtrack and explain decades of history in order to orient Everett to the level of trauma and stress involved in returning home. The even-paced nature of their relationship cannot be maintained when they leave Philadelphia, as Nic realizes so much of their happiness has been based off of her willingness to provide support without depending on any reciprocation.

“And when we’d walked out, our wet skin clinging to our dry clothes, I’d felt the heat of Jackson’s glare—felt him watching me through the trees for the rest of that trip.”

Nic has just seen the scars on Corinne’s back while they showered during a camping trip. We find out eventually that Jackson never laid a finger on Corinne, and that she had controlled and provoked him as much as she had to the rest of the friend group. At the time, Corinne wondered at Jackson’s intentions with her best friend. These little manipulations, the secrets she kept to herself to leave the other suspicious, were what began to tear the group apart.

“We lived too close—too close to each other, too close to some mysterious edge, too reckless and invincible, too naïve to our own mortalities, just too. The talk: that maybe we brought it on ourselves.”

At the time of her friendship with Corinne, Bailey, Jackson, Daniel, and Tyler, Nic was too deeply rooted in their day-to-day interactions to see the bigger picture. The friends were unhealthily reliant on each other to keep secrets safe from the outside world. The dares Corinne placed on the friend group made them act in ways that forced them to stand out in the community. 

“It’s human nature to want to tell. To be absolved.”

Nic reflects on what the police found when they searched the caverns after Corinne’s disappearance. The evidence (the ring which belonged to Nic) was made legend by the police and the public opinion that Corinne had a secret, failed romance. It is more difficult for Nic to keep her secrets that it is for her to simply tell the police everything.

“It was only after she disappeared that I realized how little my best friend had shared with me.”

Nic’s relationship with Corinne is more dynamic 10 years after Corinne’s death than it was while Corinne was alive. Nic was so controlled and manipulated that she was not able to see how unhealthy the relationship was. It is only in the course of revisiting things and moving back in time that she is able to make a narrative of the friendship. It’s clear that much of Corinne’s secrecy came from fear and shame extending at least in part from her father’s abuse, which gives motives to her need for control in other aspects of her life.

“To solve a mystery, to solve a mystery here, you can’t come from the outside.”

Tyler is missing during this part of the novel. No one knows where Annaleise is, either. Nic is caught in the middle of the mysteries, unable to sleep or eat on a normal schedule. It occurs to her that when Hannah Pardot and the other officials came into town to investigate the murder, they were unable to obtain proper information because of their lack of affiliation with the town. This is one of the main contributors to the cold case: their methods of investigation lack empathy and understanding; people remained suspicious of their intentions and were unwilling to supply information, for fear of unintentionally ousting others in the community.

“But friends to call for the deep things, the things that live in the dark space of our hearts? Those people didn’t exist for me any longer. Not since I’d left Cooley Ridge.”

During this chapter, Nic is particularly self-expressive and reflective. She’s been unable to contact Everett at work, reaching the office’s secretary (who she realizes is one of her closest friends in Philadelphia). Her loneliness isn’t something she’s realized before, as her life has been so focused on Everett. But when she’s stuck in the solitude of her childhood home with no one to call, she begins to realize how her closest connections can only exist with those who played witness to the hardships of Cooley Ridge.

“She blinked and pressed her cheek against mine, facing away from Bailey, and whispered in my ear, ‘There you are.’”

There are a few glimpses into Corinne’s dark moments during Nic’s flashbacks. Corinne would always try to access the darkest parts of people. She wanted to seduce them into acting dangerously, to pay homage to her. Although Bailey and Daniel are also present in this scene, she focuses her energy on Nic, revealing how unique Nic and Corinne’s bond was compared to the others in the group. It seems that Corinne saw access points into Nic’s psyche because of the death of Nic’s mother. She knew how to reach Nic’s emotional core.

“Her power, I realized, was not limitless, as we had all believed.”

Nic learns of Corinne’s home life in glimpses, only accessing small pieces of evidence rather than ever witnessing the larger picture. Only from the hospital visits did she learn that Corinne’s father was abusive. Although this doesn’t justify Corinne’s actions, it does help pinpoint why Corinne needed constant reassurance of her friends’ loyalty. Most people in the community only suspected that Corinne had a tumultuous life at home. Perhaps had they known what she had to face on a daily basis, their perceptions of her would have been more empathetic, more understanding of how deeply she craved attention and love.

“And if she revisited it as an adult, did the memory shift on her? Grow into a different understanding?”

Nic is referring to Annaleise here. At the time, Nic hadn’t realized how much Annaleise knew about her, Corinne, and the others. Now, she’s making up for lost time, trying to see every event through Annaleise’s eyes. This is one of the many examples of Nic’s tenderness for the younger Annaleise, even in the wake of all of the pain Annaleise has caused her family. That Annaleise never told the police their secrets is not lost on Nic.

“She told me to jump.”

Although the Ferris wheel scene has been mentioned and replayed several times, this is the first time the reader is fed this crucial piece of information: Corinne telling Nic to jump. There is a meanness Nic constantly references when she realizes what kind of person Corinne was, and this is an example of it. But Corinne doesn’t want others to know; she only whispers the most caustic things in secrecy. It takes a large portion of the novel for Nic to confront this painful moment.

“This is how it starts. This is how people decide on innocence and guilt.”

The guests at Laura’s baby shower inappropriately mention Annaleise and Corinne. They make matters worse by gossiping and shaming the girls for the decisions they made. Nic, of course, overhears this. She is well aware of the women’s’ tendencies, after witnessing the same behavior right after Corinne’s disappearance. History is repeating itself. Justice for the missing girls will be decided by them unless she is able to piece together all of the hidden information.

“I knew exactly who he was looking for.”

The majority of the town has gathered for the first day of the search for Annaleise. Nic notices some of the police officers present also worked on Corinne’s case. When one of them questions her, she knows that he’s looking for Tyler, and that in solving this case, perhaps he will be led to find out what really happened to Corinne.

“’The garage floors. It wasn’t me. I came in one day after, and they were just done.’”

This is a pivotal moment in the book because something taken for granted (the burial site of Corinne) is finally investigated and excavated. They have looked nearly everywhere else in town, except for the very earth on which they live. They’ve been unwilling to consider their father’s role in the disappearance, because he has been so sick and illogical for years. His cryptic messages, however, all end up coming true.

“Focus on the pieces of concrete. Focus on the dust. On the pressure washer. On the thunder. Focus on the tiny insignificant details. Leave out what’s happening.”

Nic is attempting to dissociate from what is unraveling before her eyes. She has just dug up Corinne’s body beneath the garage. There is a tension between how she feels and what actually needs to be executed to hide the remains. Although this is a momentary coping mechanism, it is also indicative of how Nic had dealt with all of the traumas of her youth. The task at hand is too horrifying to make sense of. 

“‘You look sick. You really didn’t know?’ she asked. ‘You never suspected?’”

Annaleise is surprised to learn that Nic was unaware of Corinne’s body wrapped in a quilt on the Farrells’ porch. As much as she witnessed, the aftermath of Corinne’s disappearance was a secret kept between the Farrell family and Tyler (a near-extension of the family). Because Nic “never suspected” anything about the body or about the blackmail, she has no answers for Annaleise. In this chapter of the novel, Nic begins the neurotic behavior that plagues her for the rest of the book.

“My memories, spinning and blurring like our pictures, like our ghosts. I couldn’t look him in the eye when I left.”

At this point, all Nic finds out from her father is that he was the last person to see Corinne before she disappeared. She doesn’t know exactly what his role was, but she implies that her father was Corinne’s murderer. Perhaps it is this that has disintegrated his sanity and forced him into a care facility. Nic has come to Grand Pines because she learns of the blackmail and watches Annaleise run into the woods, and she only confirms her worst fears.

“I have to come at it from the side, grazing pieces here and there. Not looking it directly in the eye. I’ve never told it before. This is the only way I know how.”

This is one of the rare moments of the novel during which Nic confronts the reader, jumping out of the reverse-chronology of the book to acknowledge her current mental state. We are still not quite sure what it is that she is trying to admit. 

“Laura, who could not dig a garden, let alone bury a body, but needed a place to get this woman away from her family.”

Nic has just discovered that Laura murdered Annaleise through process of elimination. This is as much a surprise to her as it is the reader, as Laura has been one of the least troubled and least troublesome characters in the book. At the same time, she has the most to lose. This kind of fierce loyalty in the book is a bond almost always exhibited by the women of Cooley Ridge, something that Nic discusses at several points over the course of the book.

“I’d killed Corinne—it was the only explanation remaining, no matter whose fault it had been.”

This is perhaps the most important quotation of the entire book. Nic has been working up to this revelation. A combination of factors has led to her inability to admit to it. The events of the night were hazy. She and Tyler couldn’t find Corinne, and they were both drunk. It was unclear whether or not Corinne had even made contact with the car. Tyler was unwilling to tell Nic what happened, and Nic never asked. She didn’t want to even consider it as a possible truth. Only by accepting this can Nic begin to heal and move on with her life.