The Wife Between Us

That night, Vanessa dreams of Richard and is disturbed by the lingering arousal she feels by him when she wakes. It brings to mind an episode of a podcast describing the similarity of the two extreme emotional states: arousal and fear. The podcast explains that the sensations of terror and arousal are exactly the same. The experts on the podcast explain that romantic love can compromise the individual’s ability to make critical assessments. Vanessa wonders if Emma is experiencing that now, and if she experienced it as well.

Vanessa is finally ready to face the truth. During her marriage, Vanessa was obsessed with the truth. She kept a secret journal hidden under the mattress of their guest room, worried that her memories would evade her. She remarks on the irony of it now—she has encased herself in lies. Endeavoring to continue to seek the truth, she writes a long letter to Emma.

Later, Vanessa answers the shouts of Charlotte to find her battling a grease fire in the kitchen. After the two put it out, Vanessa notices her aunt’s thick glasses. Thinking of the sugar that Charlotte grabbed thinking it was baking soda, the doctor’s appointments, the furniture being spaced out, and Charlotte’s sudden clumsiness and headaches, Vanessa realizes her aunt is going blind. The news is tragic: Charlotte, who loves to paint, read, and look up at the sky, is suffering from macular degeneration. Charlotte says she is not afraid and smiles. 

On that fateful October night during Vanessa’s senior year, she was too preoccupied with Daniel, her professor boyfriend, to look after a shy pledge. Maggie was unlike any of the other pledges, but Vanessa hoped bringing her into the sorority would get the house more focused on community service. During the initiation, though, Vanessa began to regret her decision: Maggie turned down drinks, didn’t speak to the other pledges, and complained about being blindfolded, which made her claustrophobic. Vanessa was supposed to keep a close eye on her, especially when the pledges swam through the choppy waves, but she only wanted to speak with Daniel. She asked a friend to look after Maggie and went to Daniel’s house to confront him.

She was stunned when a woman answered the door and called out “Honey.” Vanessa noticed the gold band on the woman’s ring finger and realized that she was his wife. Daniel and Vanessa tried to explain away the reason a student would be visiting her professor in the middle of the night, but his wife was not deceived. She told Vanessa to stay away and slammed the door. As Vanessa walked down the path from their house, hearing distant screams from Daniel’s wife, she noticed the evidence of children sprawled across the lawn. Daniel already had a family and was not interested in starting one with Vanessa. Heartbroken, she returned to her sorority and noticed Maggie was not with the rest of the pledges.

Though the two women have nothing in common other than Vanessa, Maggie and Emma blur together in Vanessa’s mind. After spending the morning talking with Charlotte, Vanessa pulls both the check and the letter out of her drawer. She has decided to use the money to help Charlotte. She rereads the letter meant for Emma one more time. In it, Vanessa asks her replacement to listen to her instincts about Richard, the ones that tell her something is wrong with him—the very same ones that Vanessa ignored.