48 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer HillierLittle Secrets
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 15 Summary
McKenzie makes herself food and posts photos online. Derek has never understood why she cares so much what strangers think of her. She reflects on her relationship with social media and the times she’s attempted to explain to Derek. She’s never been able to get him to understand, especially since he doesn’t use social media. She remembers an argument they got into about it. Then she starts to wonder if she’ll still be doing and eating the same things “if she ever marries Derek” (158). McKenzie doesn’t understand where the thought came from but fears she’s getting too attached.
McKenzie and Derek first met at Pike Place Market. She used to work at a food truck there, and Derek often visited with his son. She saw Derek and Marin’s photos and interviews in the news after Sebastian disappeared and immediately recognized him. She recognized him again when he started coming into the Green Bean some months later. She reminded him who she was, and they started chatting. She soon decided he was her next mark. They began talking at the Green Bean whenever Derek came in. Their flirting turned into dates, and McKenzie soon knew that she’d trapped Derek.
Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary
McKenzie returns home to an empty apartment. She knows that her roommate Tyler is mad at her for bailing on their plans to watch Hill House. He doesn’t approve of Derek and hates when she cancels their plans to spend time with him. McKenzie turns on the television and thinks about her relationships with J.R. and Derek. J.R. has often reminded her to be patient with Derek because he’s still grieving his son.
McKenzie thinks about the times she’s had her heart broken. Her dad left her mom for another woman when she was 12. She and her mom struggled to survive after. Two years ago now, her dad died from a heart attack. Shortly thereafter, J.R. broke up with McKenzie. McKenzie was surprised by how hurt she felt afterwards. She and J.R. still talk every so often and occasionally have sex. However, whenever they see each other, J.R. always reminds McKenzie not to get attached to him and insists that she make her own choices without factoring him into her future. He also thinks the relationship with Derek is good and believes that McKenzie can get more out of him if she wants, as he’s wealthy and in pain. J.R. doubts that Derek’s marriage will last anyway. McKenzie has never wanted to be a homewrecker but realizes that she’s fallen for Derek. She remembers the time that she had to wake Derek from a nightmare in which he was talking in his sleep to Marin about Sebastian. She wonders what will happen with their affair.
Part 2, Chapter 17 Summary
Derek doesn’t text McKenzie for three days. She tries not to think about him during her shift at the Green Bean. Her mind drifts back to college when she first met a woman named Izzy, with whom she “bonded over older men” (178). Izzy taught McKenzie how to use married, wealthy men, and McKenzie soon became a professional girlfriend, too. Izzy abandoned the scheme when she fell in love with someone named Mike. She tried convincing McKenzie to forget married men and pursue healthier relationships, but McKenzie was involved with a man named Paul from whom she thought she could get a lot of money. Paul was married with kids, but McKenzie didn’t feel guilty. However, the situation intensified when Paul’s wife discovered the affair, showed up at McKenzie’s apartment, and threatened to kill her. Izzy defended her in the moment but cut off their friendship afterwards. A text from Derek interrupts McKenzie’s thoughts. Derek wants to end their affair for good this time and tells McKenzie not to contact him again.
Part 2, Chapter 18 Summary
After work, McKenzie feels as if someone is following her. Feeling unsettled, she calls J.R. and asks him if she can come over. J.R. says he’s in a relationship now and can’t see her. McKenzie gets emotional and tells J.R. about Derek’s text. He promises to help her fix the situation.
McKenzie is upset when she returns home. She’s disappointed her mother and not Derek sent her flowers. Then, in the laundry room, the superintendent makes an advance, referencing McKenzie’s other relationships with older men. McKenzie leaves and goes upstairs to post another selfie online. She scrolls through Marin’s Instagram page and discovers that she and Derek have been in British Columbia for the weekend. McKenzie reads their friends’ comments on Marin’s posts and realizes that her affair with Derek is truly over.
Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary
McKenzie gets drunk and calls a cab to Derek’s house. She figures out the passcodes to the door and the alarm. She checks Instagram to make sure Derek and Marin won’t be home soon and wanders around the house, amazed by how fancy it is. While exploring, she remembers the conversations she and Derek have had about money. Derek grew up poor and wanted to become rich as an adult. She also remembers him talking about all the mistakes he’s made and remarking upon how fresh his relationship with McKenzie has felt.
McKenzie starts to feel guilty when she finds some of Sebastian’s things around the house. She remembers that Derek and Marin lost a child. She wanders into Marin’s closet, examines her things, rearranges her shoes, and takes a selfie. Realizing it’s time to go, she leaves.
Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary
Outside, McKenzie berates herself for making a bad decision. She remembers when she went to Paul’s house unannounced after their breakup. He offered her $10,000 when they broke up, but McKenzie wanted more. She arrived at his home when his wife and kids were there and threatened to expose the explicit photos she had of them if he didn’t give her $50,000. Afterwards, she told J.R. what she’d done, and he congratulated her.
A sound behind McKenzie interrupts her thoughts. She turns to see Julian, who she hasn’t run into in a year. He greets her and hits her on the jaw, knocking her out.
Part 2 Analysis
Part 2 develops the novel’s explorations of Conflict and Loyalty in Intimate Relationships and Identity and Self-Worth After Personal Tragedy. All six chapters in the section focus on McKenzie’s vantage point and thus develop the novel’s thematic considerations by way of her experience. In Marin’s preceding chapters, the novel’s commentaries on loyalty, love, and identity are all entangled with Marin’s grief over Sebastian’s disappearance and her frustration over Derek’s affair with McKenzie. In contrast, McKenzie’s chapters nuance these explorations through her anxieties over her affair with Derek and her longing over her relationship with J.R. The resulting interplay between the two primary female characters’ points of view makes them appear like foils of one another. While Marin is married to a wealthy man with a child and a stable career, McKenzie is a single, financially struggling barista and art student. The two women therefore experience pain and process their sorrow in competing ways because of their different backgrounds and circumstances. Despite their differences, Chapters 15-20 reveal that Marin and McKenzie have a common desire for control.
In Chapter 19, McKenzie’s decision to break into Derek and Marin’s house while drunk illustrates her subconscious desperation to claim agency over her identity and story. When Derek ends their affair for good over text, McKenzie becomes so emotionally overwhelmed that she loses her sense of right and wrong. Her anger and hurt inspire her to go to Derek’s house and probe around his and Marin’s private marital world. She does so because her character is desperate to be seen but doesn’t know how to ask for respect from others. This is why she is so reliant upon social media. Online, she “can be anyone [she] want[s] to be” and can derive an illusory sense of validation from comments and likes on her posts (158). She longs for this same sense of autonomy and affirmation in the real world, and she therefore convinces herself that going to Derek’s will grant it to her.
The scenes of McKenzie wandering through Derek and Marin’s home symbolize her invasive role in the couple’s marriage and life. Although McKenzie longs for visibility, the ways that she tries to claim her self-worth are superficial. Posting online and sneaking into Derek’s home are actions that grant her the illusion of control but don’t ultimately alter the way that she sees herself. Furthermore, breaking into the Machado’s house doesn’t change anything about the couple’s marriage or her affair. The same is true of Marin’s attempts to claim her own agency. Instead of taking steps to heal and grow, she tries to overpower, manipulate, or hurt others. Both women are therefore wrestling with their identities and self-worth because of their loss and heartbreak, creating parallel journeys in their character development.
McKenzie’s heartbreak is defined by her fraught familial past and complex relationship history. McKenzie’s encounters with loss and hardship in the past continue to impact her life in the present. Her father’s abandonment and death have left McKenzie without a support system. Her breakup with J.R. has made her question her value and worth. When J.R. left her, she was overwhelmed by the fact that someone she loved “could throw her away so easily” (170). Therefore, McKenzie’s breakup parallels her dad’s abandonment and death and triggers her traumatic experiences. Her relationships with older, married men help McKenzie distract herself from her loneliness, but these affairs cannot resolve McKenzie’s internal unrest and longing. She has tried to teach herself to “stop chasing” love and to “let go of all expectations” to protect herself and numb her pain (173). Her growing attachment to Derek upsets this mode of operating and in turn disrupts McKenzie’s emotional and psychological stability. For these reasons, McKenzie is vulnerable when she leaves Derek and Marin’s house at the end of Chapter 14.
Although she's surprised to see Julian in Capitol Hill after not seeing him for almost a year, McKenzie’s defenses are down. She’s not only drunk and self-flagellating but sees Julian as a familiar face. Her weakened emotional state makes it easy for Julian to overpower her. This closing scene of the section accelerates the narrative pacing and sustains the narrative tension into the next section. Julian’s attack also shifts the narrative stakes and complicates the novel’s thematic explorations.
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By Jennifer Hillier
