My Lovely Wife

Millicent and the narrator meet Faith’s parents at a restaurant, where they discuss how to address their children’s relationship and their sneaking out at night. Faith’s parents want to forbid the children from continuing their relationship. Millicent thinks this will not work but agrees anyway. However, she does not enforce this, although she does forbid Rory from sneaking out.

Jenna’s grades slip and her parents reiterate that she is safe and no danger will befall her. She points out that Naomi and Lindsay probably believed that, too. She has been researching statistics about abduction and murder.

The news breaks that police did find three additional recently deceased female bodies beneath the church. Two of them were strangled like the others, and one remains uncertain for now. They have not identified the bodies yet. However, they reveal that the message on the wall was written in Naomi’s blood, and it says “Tobias. Deaf.”

The narrator never interacted with Naomi as “Tobias,” so she would not have known about him. Therefore, this message in her blood makes no sense to the narrator. Lindsay did interact with “Tobias,” but the message was not in her blood. Millicent calls the narrator and reveals she has been tracking his car, suggesting that she knew he was tracking hers as well.

It dawns upon the narrator that Millicent wrote the message in Naomi’s blood and that she has framed him for the murders of Naomi, Lindsay, and the three other unidentified women. Millicent tells the narrator to look in his spare tire, where he normally keeps his extra cell phone. Instead, he finds Pixy Stix, which is a reference to Lindsay, with whom the narrator cheated on Millicent. She says this whole mess is the narrator’s fault, not hers.

The narrator thinks that someone will soon identify him as “Tobias,” and if he tries to flee town, he will probably get caught. He also does not want to leave his kids alone with Millicent. If he goes to the police and tells the truth, that Millicent committed all these murders, they probably will not believe him, because she has likely planted his DNA in the church basement. The only person the narrator killed was Holly, and she is not part of this abandoned church situation, nor do the police even know about her. Still, he cannot go to the police.

The narrator goes home briefly to collect some things while nobody is there. He texts his kids that he loves them and to not believe what they hear about him. At night, he goes to the tennis courts at the country club, where there are no security cameras.

In the morning, the narrator removes the GPS tracker from his car and attaches it to a random semi-truck. He removes his old phone’s battery and gets a new disposable one. He then goes to Kekona’s house, which is empty because she is in Hawaii. He hides his car in her garage and breaks into the house through a door that does not lock properly. The narrator has Millicent’s tablet, but it is locked and he doesn’t know the PIN. He was hoping to find some evidence on it.

The narrator has an alibi for the nights Lindsay and Naomi were killed: both times, he was home with Jenna, who was sick. However, she was asleep for part of that time and would not be a great witness to his alibi. The narrator does not know who to turn to because he does not have family besides Millicent and the kids, and his friends are all mutual with Millicent. He decides to call Andy.

The narrator meets Andy at a restaurant. Andy does not know the narrator has an alter ego named “Tobias,” so he doesn’t realize the gravity of his friend’s situation yet. The narrator admits he cheated on Millicent, and now she is framing him for crimes, and he needs to get into her tablet. Andy agrees to open the tablet and not tell anyone about it.

Annabelle appears on the news, having seen the message written in Naomi’s blood, “Tobias. Deaf.” She shares her experiences with Tobias and describes his appearance for a sketch artist, who creates a picture. The narrator assumes that soon, someone will reveal his true name and identity. A couple of bartenders who have met “Tobias” also appear on TV and describe his outfits, what drinks he ordered, and other identifying details.

Police have identified one of the women buried in the church basement: it’s Jessica, the cashier from the EZ-Go where the narrator would always stop for coffee. Millicent does not go to this EZ-Go, so she must have been tracking the narrator for a while. Millicent must have purposely killed people whom the narrator knows, or perhaps people she thought he was sleeping with or was likely to sleep with. The narrator wracks his brain for women he knows who have disappeared recently. He only thinks of one: Beth, a waitress from the country club who recently moved home to Alabama due to a family situation.

The narrator’s real identity is revealed on the news, and he is now a “person of interest” (336). Josh claims that when he met the narrator, he instinctively knew something was wrong. Andy calls the narrator, who promises he did not commit these murders. Andy says if the narrator’s lying, he will kill him. They meet up and Andy returns the unlocked tablet. There was nothing suspicious on it, though, which isn’t surprising to the narrator because Millicent would be smart enough to wipe anything incriminating. Still, he takes the tablet back to Kekona’s and spends a lot of time scrolling through it, hoping Millicent made a mistake.

Using the tablet, the narrator discovers that Millicent bought the deli building and was leasing it to Denise. The narrator concludes that Millicent always knew Owen was dead, and found someone (Owen’s sister, via Denise) who would help prove this fact. This information does not prove that Millicent killed the five women, though. The narrator’s acquaintances appear on TV to say they wouldn’t have guessed he was a serial killer.

The other two women from the church basement have been identified: the second is Beth, as the narrator expected. A fake letter told her parents she was relocating to Montana, and a fake letter to the country club said she was moving back to Alabama. Nobody realized yet that the letters were fake. The third woman is Crystal, the woman who kissed the narrator when she was working for their family.

Petra is still alive and appears on TV, having also met “Tobias.” Andy calls, saying he stopped by to see the narrator’s family. They are okay, but they have been staying home to avoid the media. Also, they might be leaving town soon, so the narrator needs to act quickly. The narrator goes through Millicent’s browsing history and finds out she has been reading up on how certain eye drops cause upset stomachs if ingested.

The narrator realizes Millicent has been poisoning Jenna with eye drops when she wants to commit murders alone. Millicent may also have been poisoning the narrator because he has been sick at times too. He is more horrified than ever.

On the news, it says the narrator’s blood, sweat, and DNA were found at the church. They also say Naomi had a lot of paper cuts that were made with some thick type of paper. The narrator knows what Millicent used for this.

The narrator concludes that Millicent used the airplane information card to make Naomi’s papercuts—the one he gave her for Christmas years ago, which she usually keeps in her car. Andy asks the narrator not to contact him again, so now he has no friends left. Kekona’s taxi pulls up to her house, so the narrator cannot hide in her house anymore.

Kekona is bound to notice the car in her garage, and other signs that somebody’s been in her house while she was on vacation. The narrator climbs a tree in his own backyard and hides in it. After his family is asleep, he enters the garage and Millicent’s car but finds no emergency card. However, Petra’s earring is in Millicent’s car, suggesting Rory told her about the narrator’s infidelity.

The narrator goes upstairs and finds his children sleeping safely. He wants to kill Millicent to prevent her from harming the kids. However, when he enters her bedroom, she is waiting up with a gun as if she knew he would show up. Millicent reveals that Holly never tortured her or tried to kill her; instead, Millicent was torturing and attempting to kill Holly. The narrator also confronts her about poisoning Jenna. Jenna appears in the doorway.

Jenna overheard that her mother poisoned her. Millicent tries to pin it on the narrator, along with the murders, but Jenna’s already overheard enough to realize her mother was harming her and also evidently framing her dad for the murders. Rory appears in the doorway as well. Millicent points her gun at the narrator, and Rory steps in between them. Millicent fires a shot into the bed. She steps toward Rory and the narrator is afraid she will kill the kids. Jenna has the knife she has been keeping under her bed and stabs Millicent with it as she fires another gunshot. Rory takes the gun from her. The kids leave the room and the narrator stabs Millicent again. She dies.

Three years after Millicent’s death, the narrator and his kids have moved to Scotland. The police believed the narrator that he killed Millicent in self-defense, especially after the kids corroborated this story. Millicent was discovered to be the true murderer of the women in the church as well. The narrator’s DNA that she planted was all from the same day, so he couldn’t have been the murderer, because the women all died on different days.

Jenna, Rory, and the narrator all have therapists. The narrator coaches tennis and the kids attend school. The narrator meets a woman and introduces himself as Quentin, which is the other name he considered using as an alter ego besides “Tobias.”