66 pages • 2 hours read
Liane MoriartyThe Husband's Secret
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A 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 19-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
John-Paul finds Cecilia after she’s read the letter. The letter was written when Cecilia was in the hospital after having delivered their first daughter, Isabel. In the letter, John-Paul confesses to having killed Janie Crowley when he was 17. He strangled her because she’d just told him that she’d chosen another boy over him and then she’d laughed at him. John-Paul’s new parental love for Isabel makes him realize the depth of what he’s done to Ed and Rachel Crowley. He also writes that he cannot confess because of his severe claustrophobia and that to be locked up in jail would be unbearable. The murder, he explains, is also the cause of his suicide attempt at age 18. In the letter, he implores Cecilia to tell the Crowleys how sorry he is and how, now that he’s a father, he “[understands] exactly what [he’s] done” (192). He apologizes profusely to Cecilia in the letter and claims that he’s writing it because he knows she’s strong enough to handle what must be done.
Cecilia, having read the letter, is furious. She struggles to believe that it’s possible for John-Paul to have done this thing and struggles even more with what should be done about it. She wonders if this means John-Paul is evil. He strangled a girl to death, so there are a lot of people who would say that he’s evil. On the other hand, she knows him very well as a wonderful husband and father and a man in whom evil has no hold. A part of her insists John-Paul must turn himself in and face the consequences. Another part of her, though, a larger part, chooses to protect her children. She thinks that they can never be told about what their father has done—that their father is a murderer. She thinks, finally, that she is having a nervous breakdown.
Chapter 20 Summary
Rachel shows the video tape she found to Sergeant Rodney Bellach, the original investigating detective on Janie’s case. Bellach says he understands why Rachel thought this was new evidence, but that he doesn’t think it’s substantial enough for the “boys” to take any action. Rachel argues that this video makes it clear that he was in love with Janie and angry with her. Bellach says that Janie was pretty and that there were probably many boys in love with her. He tells Rachel he’ll show it to the new detectives but that he can’t make any promises about anything new coming from it.
Chapter 21 Summary
This chapter is set on April 6, 1984, the last day of Janie Crowley’s life. She and Connor are on a bus together. She feels an edge of anxiety that is “fear or anticipation, or both” (203). She tells Connor that she’s made a decision, but the author doesn’t tell us yet what that decision is.
Chapter 22 Summary
Cecilia awakens on Wednesday morning. As she lies in bed looking at John-Paul, she thinks about their conversation the previous evening. Once Cecilia had read the letter, John-Paul talked as though a dam had broken. He told her all the details of his and Janie’s relationship, the murder itself, and the aftermath. He and Janie had met while applying for part-time jobs at a McDonalds and began speaking because Janie recognized him from their days in primary school. They had an intense connection and began carrying on a secret relationship—secret because Janie’s father, Ed, had forbidden her to have a boyfriend until she was 18. When she told him that she was in love with someone else and that she was breaking things off to be Connor’s girlfriend, John-Paul was stricken. He said, “But I thought you were my girlfriend!” and Janie Crowley laughed (207). Thinking she was laughing at him, John-Paul experienced a moment of blinding rage and wanted to kill her.
He is clear about this rage and desire to kill when he speaks to Cecilia: “John-Paul seemed horribly desperate for Cecilia to know this. He said he didn’t want to justify it, or mitigate it, or pretend it was an accident—because for a few seconds, he absolutely felt the desire to kill” (207). He says that he only grasped her neck for a few seconds before he caught himself, but that when he let go, she was already dead. He could swear it had only been a second or two, not nearly long enough to have killed Janie. He had his mother’s rosary beads with him for good luck on his test that day, so he put them in her hands, covered her with her school blazer, and ran.
He tells Cecilia that he’s been trying to pay or make up for this one act for the 20 years since it happened. He spent the years after the murder in a haze that alternated with periods of depression. Then he met Cecilia and he “sensed something about you. A deep-down goodness. I fell in love with your goodness” (209). This comment appalls Cecilia, who thought he’d fallen in love with her for other qualities. She thinks, “I thought you fell in love with my figure, my sparkling company, my sense of humor, not my goodness, for God’s sake!” (210).
Things changed for John-Paul when Isabel was born. He would sometimes see Ed Crowley on his drive to work and was tortured by the man’s apparent pain. He decided then that he had to do penance. This took the form of devoting himself to the community—Cecilia had thought this was something they shared as a value for its own sake—and giving up anything that he felt brought him too much pleasure. For example, he gave up rowing because he loved it too much. He also confesses that he gave up sex in November, planning to abstain for six months, though he worried that Cecilia would think he was having an affair.
As Cecilia worries again about whether or not this one act makes John-Paul into an evil person, Polly, their youngest daughter, arrives and climbs happily into bed with them. Cecilia and John-Paul’s eyes meet, and they end the chapter in unspoken agreement: The situation is different for them because of their precious daughters.
Chapter 23 Summary
It is Liam’s first day at St. Angela’s, but he balks when it’s time to go in. Anxious about the new school and sad from missing his father, Liam tells Tess that he wants to go home and that she, Felicity, and Will should stop fighting: “Just say sorry to each other. Say you didn’t mean it. So we can go back home” (217). Tess is horrified that she thought she could conceal the reality of the situation from Liam. She starts to tell him that he doesn’t have to go to school after all, but they’re interrupted by Trudy, the school principal. Trudy kneels by Liam and tells him that she and his teacher transformed the classroom into a spaceship yesterday and that their Easter egg hunt will happen in outer space. Liam, lured by Trudy’s way with children, obediently follows her into the school.
As she leaves the school, Tess runs into Cecilia Fitzpatrick. Cecilia seems odd and scattered. She’s forgotten to bring Polly’s gym shoes, and she herself is wearing two very different kinds of shoes: one a black flat, the other a heeled gold sandal. She’s walking with a limp and wearing sunglasses. The two women then run into Rachel Crowley, who is arriving at work. Tess wonders if anyone ever sees Rachel without thinking about Janie and her murder. She thinks, “it was impossible to think that Rachel had once been an ordinary woman, that no one could have sensed the tragedy that was waiting for her” (221). Rachel thanks Cecilia for the ride home the previous evening, but when Cecilia remains awkwardly silent, Tess steps up and carry on the conversation. Cecilia manages to say goodbye to Rachel when she leaves, but afterwards she vomits into the bushes.
Tess has no idea what to do when confronted with Cecilia Fitzpatrick, in mismatched shoes, being sick in a bush. She finally remembers that she has tissues and water in her purse and feels triumph in her ability to offer something helpful. She offers to drive Cecilia home and bring her daughter’s forgotten sports shoes back to the school for her. Having a task and the ability to help someone fills her with “an unusual sense of capability and purpose” (224).
Chapter 24 Summary
Rachel wonders what’s wrong with Cecilia, but she is primarily focused on the video of Janie and Connor. Despite Rodney Bellach’s warning that the video may not “go anywhere” as new evidence, Rachel feels confident that if a younger, smarter police officer sees the video, they will realize its implications and investigate Connor further. She feels good about this and realizes it’s because she’s finally able to do something for Janie.
Rob calls, and Rachel tries not to be irritated that it’s him and not the police. He asks Rachel if she’s okay with going to Lauren’s parents’ home for lunch on Easter Sunday, as he and Lauren are busy preparing for their move and they could see both families at one lunch if Rachel were to come. Rachel reflects on how tiresome she finds Lauren’s worldly and sophisticated parents. She resolves to play outside with Liam to avoid their conversation and colorful guests. Rob asks if Rachel would like Lauren to bring more macarons, but Rachel lies and says she didn’t like them. Rob then brings up the anniversary of Janie’s death, which is Friday, and asks if he, Lauren, and Jacob can join her on her annual trip to the park where Janie was found. Rachel resentfully imagines Lauren in the park, looking put together, and almost says no. Instead, she says yes and ends the phone call.
Chapters 19-24 Analysis
These chapters reveal key details about Janie Crowley’s murder. Connor Whitby is innocent of the crime, though Rachel is ever more convinced that he’s guilty. Cecilia’s world comes to what seems to her like an end, and in some ways she’s correct. Her world will never again be what it was before she read the letter. As we’ve seen, Cecilia prides herself on her ability to take care of people and things. Her identity is tied up in her efficiency and organization. Now, however, Cecilia is confronted with a problem that cannot and will not respond to the tools within her power. She is also confronted with an impossible moral decision. If she tells Rachel or the police what John-Paul has done, he will be arrested, and her entire family, including her three young daughters, will suffer. If she does not tell Rachel or the police, on the other hand, John-Paul will get away with murder, and she will be complicit.
Though Cecilia has only just begun to puzzle through this problem, we see that her initial response is much the same as Tess’s was to the affair: She moves, first, to protect her children. Motherhood is an important theme in Liane Moriarty’s work, and she demonstrates its power here by showing us two women who make what may seem like wrong decisions when confronted with the possibility of their children suffering. We also see how Moriarty moves through the timelines of the book, shuffling between each woman’s present and the past. The past is visited both through explicit flashbacks and through the women’s reflections on its events and their feelings.
John-Paul’s revelation has a dramatic effect on Cecilia’s sense of morality and conscience, but it also affects her sense of identity. Everything she believed about her husband and their life together has been a lie, as John-Paul made clear with his long confession about penance. She must now also cope with the fact that she is the kind of woman who would cover up the murder of a teenaged girl because to do otherwise would irrevocably disrupt her life and cause her daughters great pain. John-Paul’s confession, too, shows the burden of guilt and grief that he’s been carrying all these years. As unfair as it is to Cecilia, this unburdening seems to have had some positive effects on John-Paul.
Rachel’s grief is finally channeled into righteous anger at the person she believes is Janie’s murderer. Though she’s wrong about the killer, her belief that she is right and that she’s found the necessary evidence gives her a spark of hope and life that she’s been missing. Perhaps the self-reflection she’s been doing recently prompts her to say yes to Rob’s request to come along on the anniversary of Janie’s death. Rachel has felt “untethered” from Rob since the murder, though Jacob has become her tether. When Rachel says yes to Rob’s request, she is allowing for the possibility of new ties and deeper relationships, even if she may not realize it yet.
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