The Wife Between Us

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Prologue-Chapter 3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-9

Part 1, Chapters 10-12

Part 1, Chapters 13-15

Part 1, Chapters 16-18

Part 2, Chapters 19-21

Part 2, Chapters 22-24

Part 2, Chapters 25-27

Part 2, Chapters 28-30

Part 3, Chapters 31-33

Part 3, Chapters 34-36

Part 3, Chapters 37-39

Part 3, Chapter 40-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Part 2, Chapters 19-21 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary

Vanessa tells her replacement, Emma, “I used to be you” (165). Richard hired Emma as his assistant, and in less than a year, he’d left Vanessa for her. Vanessa, who has rehearsed this moment every night, tells Emma that she will regret marrying Richard and he will hurt her. Emma was warned that Vanessa might try something like this, so she is stubborn and protective of Richard. Desperately, Vanessa brings up the cocktail party when the caterers were late. Emma was there, and Vanessa tells her that it was Richard’s fault that there wasn’t any Raveneau, because he didn’t order it. Emma, though, tells her it was delivered, and that she had placed the order. Though Vanessa yells that Richard blamed her, Emma dismisses her, jumping into a cab and leaving Vanessa on the curb. Alone, Vanessa begins to doubt her own perception of her marriage. She wonders if everything Richard said was true and, as always, if she is “crazy” like her mother, who had a lifelong battle with mental illness.

Vanessa remembers their honeymoon in Antigua and how nervous she was on the plane. Most of the honeymoon was romantic and dream-like, but the memory was tainted by a traumatic scuba diving expedition. Richard and Vanessa were not licensed, but the instructor took them out anyway. Once in the water, Vanessa panicked. The instructor pulled her out, but she was shaken, and they headed back to shore. Richard comforted her, holding her tightly and refusing the instructor’s offer of help. When they reached the shore, Richard took her to their room. Richard suggested that they go to the beach, but Vanessa, wanting to rest, encouraged him to go alone. She took a Xanax and crawled into bed.

Barely awake, she heard the instructor, Eric, come in to return her sunglasses. A moment later, her phone rang, but there was no voice on the other end. Thinking of the numerous calls of the kind she’d been receiving, Vanessa threw her phone against the tile and then plunged it into the ice bucket. Then, she wrapped it in newspaper and shoved the phone into the waste basket, resolving to tell Richard—who’d bought her the phone—that she’d lost it at the beach. Drifting off back to sleep, Vanessa registered the tenderness of her arm where Richard had held her and made a mental note to wear a sweater over her evening dress later to cover the bruise forming there.

Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary

After her brief encounter with Emma, Vanessa sits at a hotel bar feeling anguished. Her phone rings, and she notices that she has three missed calls from Saks and two from Aunt Charlotte. She answers Charlotte’s call, aching at the thought of worrying her. Vanessa lies initially, saying she is at work. However, when Charlotte tells her that Vanessa’s boss called her because Vanessa didn’t show up, Vanessa tells Charlotte where she is. Soon, her aunt appears and takes a seat beside Vanessa. Vanessa asks her who she was after she married Richard, and Charlotte tells her she changed; Charlotte first noticed that Vanessa was unlike herself at her 29th birthday dinner, a year after the wedding. Richard and Vanessa had invited Charlotte to their club for dinner to celebrate Vanessa’s birthday. Charlotte remarks on the vast difference between the “settled” people at the club and Vanessa’s “energetic and young” friends when she was single (180). Vanessa understands, remembering how out of place she felt there.

The dinner was very telling for Charlotte, who remembers that Vanessa had ordered a glass of wine but changed her order to water when Richard touched her hand. Vanessa protests that she had been trying to get pregnant, but Charlotte says that something else concerned her. When the waiter brought out Vanessa’s salad, she berated him for forgetting to put the dressing on the side. This shocked Charlotte, firstly because Vanessa had been a waitress and should have been understanding, and secondly because Vanessa had not asked for the dressing on the side at all. Vanessa doesn’t remember the exchange but remembers similarly tense meals with Richard and knows that Charlotte has a great memory. Vanessa values her aunt’s honesty but wonders what else Charlotte has kept quiet out of love for her.

Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary

When she married Richard, Vanessa knew her new life would be different, but she underestimated just how much it would change. She had thought marriage would erase the worries of her single life, but instead it replaced those concerns with new ones. To her surprise, the calmness of married life intensified her anxiety and brought back her insomnia. Sometimes, Vanessa would go into Manhattan to see Sam, and she would have a wonderful time. One time, after she’d laughed with Richard about the time she’d had, he unexpectedly said he would be working late every night that week. From then on, she’d only see Sam when Richard was away.

One day, after she’d been on the phone with Sam, the house alarm went off. Afraid it was an intruder, Vanessa grabbed her phone and ran to hide in the closet. She called Richard, who told her the police were on their way and he’d be home soon. When the police arrived, they found no signs of forced entry or an intruder. They assured her it was probably just a false alarm, but Richard mentioned an unusual truck parked at the end of their street, alarming Vanessa. Though she hadn’t seen anyone in the house, Vanessa had thought of one person who might come for her.

Vanessa began to recount the tragic events of an October night in her senior year of college. Her day had begun with the realization that she was pregnant. After taking a pregnancy test to confirm her suspicions, Vanessa had frantically searched for her boyfriend, Daniel, who was just getting out of class. He was a professor—her former professor. Irritated that she had violated the one rule of their relationship by acknowledging him on campus, Daniel told her he would call her later. Vanessa told him to pick her up at their usual spot, but he declined again, getting into his car and driving away. Vanessa returned to her sorority house to prepare for that night’s initiation, which she had planned. It was meant to be a fun but very safe night. Later, when she thought of the police lights and the screaming, she wondered if they had really needed all that liquor. However, Vanessa was too distraught over the way Daniel had treated her to think about that night’s event. Angrily, she decided to confront him at the home he shared with other professors.

Part 2, Chapters 19-21 Analysis

Vanessa’s confrontation with Emma in Chapter 19 works to undermine Vanessa’s credibility, while also demonstrating the influence Richard already possesses over Emma. Vanessa’s description of Emma, who is kind, young, and beautiful, establishes her as Richard’s new Nellie. Emma, though, clearly has a different recollection of the dissolution of Vanessa’s marriage to Richard, represented by the Raveneau. Vanessa had marked that night in her memory as the night her marriage ended, years of microaggressions and abuse culminating in a final, terrible confrontation. However, Emma’s assertion that the wine was in fact delivered challenges Vanessa’s perception of the events, momentarily destabilizing her believability. Vanessa feels this too: “for the first time I truly wonder if everything Richard said about me is true. Am I crazy, like my mother, who battled illness her entire life—at times more successfully than others?” (167).

Vanessa’s relationship to her mother affects her relationship with herself. Having watched her mother in the throes of mental illness, and seen the ways it affected her parents’ marriage, Vanessa is acutely aware—and terrified—of the hereditary nature of her mother’s affliction. However, Vanessa’s momentary self-doubt is more indicative of Richard’s pattern of gaslighting, as he made her feel irrational in order to reclaim his power in the relationship when he’d done something wrong. Vanessa’s memory of the honeymoon alludes to Richard’s abuse. After her traumatic scuba experience, Richard is possessive, putting himself between Vanessa and the instructor. More troubling, though, is the mark he leaves on her arm. Rather than being alarmed, Vanessa has the instinctive reaction to cover it, protecting Richard again.

Chapter 20 addresses Richard and Vanessa’s toxic relationship through the truthful Aunt Charlotte and is therefore less ambiguous. Charlotte’s story reveals the ways Vanessa changed, particularly in how she treated others. Chapter 21 builds upon this by displaying the slow dissolution of Vanessa’s friendship with Sam. When the alarm goes off in Chapter 20, it triggers Vanessa’s greatest anxiety—that someone has come to attack her. Her revelation that she worries it is someone specific, “someone who blames [her]—who wants [her] punished,” alludes to that October night (189). The discovery that the night that changed Vanessa’s life involved a sorority initiation (which she planned), police lights, and screaming that also took place on the day of a confrontation with her flighty professor boyfriend alludes to the possibility of Vanessa’s culpability in some terrible event.