The Last Thing He Told Me

In this flashback chapter, Bailey, Owen, and Hannah were having dinner in a restaurant. When Bailey excused herself from the table, Owen told Hannah he was not taking her to visit cousins in Carmel the following weekend as he had told her because he does not actually have any cousins. He was taking her to Big Sur, where he intended to propose.

When Bailey returned to the table, Owen told her Hannah bought tickets for the three of them to see a play. It was obvious Bailey does not want to spend another day with Hannah, who suggested that Owen and Bailey go to the play without her. Bailey, Hannah could tell, was grateful to Hannah for understanding that she wanted to spend time with her father without Hannah’s company, and smiled at Hannah for the first time.

As Hannah follows Nicholas Bell to his office, she sees the table she designed—the one featured in Architectural Digest and launched her career, and which has been reproduced by several manufacturers—in the dining room, and shudders to think that anyone researching the table could have stumbled on information about Hannah, Owen, and Bailey.

In Bell’s office there is an entire table filled with photos of Bailey as a young child, many of them featuring Kate, as well. Bell asks Hannah what she wants from him, and she says she wants to come to an agreement. Bell tells Hannah how he initially got involved with the crime syndicate, and Hannah pushes back against Bell’s claim he was not doing anything wrong. When Hannah comments that the crime syndicate was doing a lot of damage, Bell counters with a question aimed at her loyalty to Owen, whom he calls Ethan: “What about the harm you do when you deprive that child of knowing everyone who could have reminded her of her mother? Everyone who loved her?” (271).

Bell also tells Hannah that Ethan knew all about Bell’s work for the syndicate, which makes Ethan’s betrayal of Bell incredibly hypocritical. Bell says Ethan wrongly blamed the crime syndicate for Kate’s death, and suggests her murder was a result of a decision made by Kate’s employer, a judge of the Texas Supreme Court, who had just handed down a damaging and potentially very costly ruling against an energy company.

Ethan’s betrayal cost Bell six and a half years in prison, he says, and he cannot guarantee Ethan’s safety now, nor does he want to do so. Hannah asks if Bell was disappointed when Kate married Ethan, and he admits he was but says that over time he came to like and even trust Ethan. But, he tells Hannah, “I clearly shouldn’t have [...] I could tell you one story about your husband and you’d never see him the same way again” (275).

Hannah now believes this is true, and she accepts there is a great deal she does not know about Owen but loves him still. She steers the conversation back to the deal she wants to make, asking Bell to guarantee Bailey’s safety with the crime syndicate in return for allowing Bell to have a relationship with Bailey. Bell says he can do that, but he cannot and will not ever be able to guarantee Ethan’s safety. Hannah agrees, knowing she is consigning Bailey to life without her father and herself to life without her husband. Bell agrees to this plan after warning Hannah that Ethan must never try to come back. Grady Bradford arrives to take Hannah home and she leaves Bell’s house with him.