60 pages • 2 hours read
Samantha DowningMy Lovely Wife
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
The first two women that the narrator and Millicent killed—Holly and someone who has not been revealed yet—were not premeditated. Only Lindsay has been premeditated so far. Now, the narrator is searching for a new person to murder using Owen’s criteria, which is difficult to do online because most people do not list their heights except sometimes on dating websites. Millicent does not want to pick someone from a dating site, so the narrator suggests finding someone in real life so they can assess their height and other attributes in person. She agrees. The narrator wanders around in public, searching for women who fit Owen’s requirements. He sees a parking meter worker writing tickets who fits the physical requirements. Her badge says A. Parson. He takes a picture of her and shows Millicent later. She approves but the narrator plans to research her further.
Chapter 14 Summary
When the narrator killed Holly, he did not plan on committing more murders beyond that one. After the psychiatric facility released Holly, she started showing up at their house, writing letters, calling them, and following them in public. Millicent rebuffed all of Holly’s attempts to contact her, but Holly persisted, although she did not do anything threatening enough to be of concern to the police or the psychiatric facility. The narrator went to visit Holly at the grocery store where she worked. He told her to stay away from his family, but soon after that, Millicent returned from work one day while the kids were at school to find Holly alone in their house. She texted the narrator, and he came home. Holly had broken a window to get in, then started panicking and hitting herself. She said Millicent should have died in the car accident. Holly lunged toward the narrator and Millicent. Seeing this as a threat to his family, and without time to think rationally, the narrator grabbed his nearby tennis racket and killed Holly with it.
Chapter 15 Summary
Josh, the news reporter, asks the police if they think Owen has returned and is the one behind Lindsay’s murder. The narrator sends Josh a note saying, “It’s good to be home” (86), signed with Owen’s name. Josh does not discuss the note on the air, though.
The parking meter attendant’s name is Annabelle, and the narrator has been stalking her. Rory continues blackmailing the narrator because the narrator keeps sneaking out at night. At dinner, Jenna asks who Owen is. The narrator says Owen is a bad man who may have killed Lindsay but will never hurt Jenna. The narrator reflects that before they had kids, he and Millicent used to tell each other everything, but they no longer have time, so now they stick to highlights and also sometimes keep secrets from each other.
Chapter 16 Summary
Owen is now all over the news, and everyone debates if he’s really back or not. The narrator is supposed to have a tennis lesson with Trista, but he finds her in the country club bar instead, looking upset while drinking and watching the news. She shares that she dated Owen years ago before he was a known killer, and she still has feelings for him. It is upsetting to her that he became a murderer and is now at it again. Andy does not know about this and the narrator agrees not to tell him. Trista also shares details about Owen’s childhood home, which gives the narrator information to use in his letters to Josh so that everyone will believe it is Owen writing the letters.
Chapter 17 Summary
The narrator drafts another letter from “Owen” to Josh, which includes details about Owen’s childhood home and also says another woman will be abducted and killed on the upcoming Friday the 13th. The narrator plans to kidnap Annabelle but does not put her name in the letter.
Annabelle is very dedicated to her job, does not have a romantic partner, and has few close friends. The narrator continues following her to gather more information. He is not sure how to kidnap her on Friday the 13th after warning the whole city about it with his letter to Josh.
Chapter 18 Summary
The second woman that Millicent and the narrator killed was named Robin, and this was also unplanned. Robin knocked on their door about a year after they killed Holly when the narrator was home alone. He did not know who she was, but she saw him and followed him home. She recognized him because she worked at the grocery store with Holly and was there when the narrator confronted Holly about staying away from his family. The conversation was tense and Robin now thinks the narrator might have killed Holly. Robin wanted the narrator to pay her for her silence and cooperation. Besides Robin, nobody seemed to have noticed Holly was missing, but if Robin went to the police, it would alert them. The narrator texted Millicent, who returned home and killed Robin with a waffle iron.
Chapter 19 Summary
Jenna is sick, so the narrator goes home to tend to her while Millicent finishes her workday. The narrator recounts how, after killing Holly and Robin, he did not plan to kill anyone else, until one day at the mall he saw a woman who looked like Robin and pointed her out to Millicent. Both of them seemed thrilled by this. The narrator remembers the satisfying feeling of protecting their family by killing Robin and Holly, and now he craves the feeling again.
Chapter 20 Summary
The narrator sends a letter to Josh claiming “Owen” will kidnap another woman on Friday the 13th and kill her. Millicent and the narrator attend a country club networking event. Josh shares the letter on TV, sending the community into a panic.
Chapter 21 Summary
On Monday the 9th, the narrator stalks Annabelle while she is working. Using his Tobias persona, he pretends to be the owner of a car she is ticketing. He flirts with her and she does not give the car a ticket. The narrator recounts how he always felt like he disappointed his parents, but Millicent makes him feel like he is better than the average person. The first time he told her he loved her was years ago when they trespassed into someone’s backyard to climb a tree.
Chapter 22 Summary
The narrator loves coffee from machines at gas stations. He usually goes to an EZ-Go with a cashier named Jessica. The narrator continues stalking Annabelle and, on Wednesday, purposely bumps into her after she eats dinner with her parents. He invites her to a bar and they chat. Annabelle shares that her boyfriend was killed by a driver who was intoxicated. This makes the narrator decide that he won’t sleep with Annabelle, nor will he kill her, because it would be too sad. They exchange numbers, and she leaves. The narrator stalks Naomi and decides they should kidnap her on Friday.
Chapter 23 Summary
The narrator tells Millicent he wants to kidnap Naomi instead. Millicent says Naomi is too tall. The narrator says Annabelle has a boyfriend who is likely to cause trouble. They agree upon Naomi.
The narrator runs into Trista, who seems to be on drugs. She is struggling with the knowledge that Owen is going to kidnap and kill another woman tomorrow. Jenna and her friends are worried about Owen, too. Rory claims Jenna is “too ugly” to be murdered.
Chapter 24 Summary
The narrator stalks Naomi in the hotel lobby. He has never spoken to her. He starts to worry she is too nice to everyone, but she flips off one rude customer behind his back, which solidifies the narrator’s opinion that she’s the “right” person to murder.
Chapter 25 Summary
On Saturday morning, the narrator explains that the night before, Millicent kidnapped Naomi and took her somewhere while he disposed of Naomi’s car. The kids turn the news on to see who got kidnapped. So far, the authorities do not know. Fifty-three women have been reported missing and more than 1,000 people claimed to see Owen on Friday. However, the police do not know who is truly missing yet.
Chapters 13-25 Analysis
This section develops The Wide-Ranging Effects of Infidelity and Murder. When they murdered Holly and Robin, the narrator and Millicent faced very few consequences. The police did not seem to be aware that they went missing, and if they did, their murder investigations were not covered on the news, nor did anyone come to ask Millicent and the narrator what happened to Holly and Robin. The narrator does not even feel shame or guilt when he thinks about them, because he believes that he and Millicent were protecting their family. If Holly and Robin’s friends and family suffer as a result of their disappearance, the narrator does not hear about it; and because he does not hear about it, it does not occur to him that any suffering could exist. In the present, however, the narrator is starting to learn that murder and infidelity can both come with bigger consequences than he thought.
The murder of Lindsay and the kidnapping of Naomi cause widespread, public panic which negatively impacts most members of the community, including the narrator’s friends and children. On the night Naomi is kidnapped, 53 different women are reported missing because they did not answer phone calls from panicked loved ones. Most of these women are not really missing, but their families and friends believe they might have been because of the narrator’s letter to the newscaster Josh. Trista has a particularly negative response to the news because it brings up old romantic feelings she had for Owen, which make her feel guilty because he has turned out to be a serial killer. Jenna becomes fearful that, as a teenage girl, she will also become a potential target for murderers. The narrator did not anticipate any of these effects. When he wrote the letter to Josh, he hoped to convince the public Owen was back to take attention off himself and Millicent, not to cause anxiety for women in the community. Although the narrator hoped to gain control by embracing murder as an extracurricular activity with his wife, he cannot control the ramifications of the crime spree he and Millicent have started.
These ramifications illustrate The Challenges of Parenthood. At first, the narrator does not seem to recognize that becoming a serial killer will interfere with his ability to be a good father. He believes he was “protecting” his family when he and Millicent killed Holly and Robin, which leads him to conclude that murder does not impede his parenting ability. However, the murders of Lindsay and Naomi force the narrator to confront his naïve belief that the crimes he commits cannot hurt his children. When Jenna is afraid of becoming a victim of Owen’s, the narrator reassures her that Owen will not hurt her specifically. He knows this is true because “Owen” is actually his persona, but while he would never physically harm his children, his actions cause Jenna significant emotional damage. Unintentionally, he has created an unsafe environment for his child. Furthermore, though the narrator feels certain that Millicent would never harm her own children, Millicent has already proven herself to be much more monstrous than the narrator originally thought. The narrator’s belief that he has everything under control begins to seem naïve at best.
The narrator also starts to face the fact that killing random strangers, such as Naomi, Lindsay, or Annabelle, does not have the same meaning as killing people who were threatening his family. With Lindsay dead, the narrator does not feel like he has protected his family from a threat, so he does not feel heroic, purposeful, or “above average.” Instead, he feels horrified, especially when he imagines how Millicent might have tortured her for nearly a year. At this point, he still wants to please Millicent, but his desire to protect his children is starting to eclipse his desire to please Millicent. This is a gradual process and a struggle to sort through, because previously, the narrator felt like Millicent, as the mother of their children, would always help him protect them. Now, it seems like a threat is growing from within the family.
