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 3, Chapter 40-Epilogue Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Chapter 40 Summary

Sometime later, Vanessa visits Richard at the mental health facility where he agreed to spend 28 days to avoid prosecution. Maureen intercepts Vanessa before she can find Richard. When Maureen begins to cast Richard as the victim, Vanessa retorts in surprise that he was the attacker. Then, Maureen reveals that Richard was in the car crash that killed their parents. Vanessa realizes that the silver crescent-shaped scar above his eye and his fear of blood came from that crash, when he hung upside down for ages with his parents dead in front of him. Maureen tells Vanessa that their father had a very bad temper and would often harm his wife. When he was very angry, he would speed. She suspects that her father was arguing with her mother when they crashed.

Maureen asks Vanessa to “finally leave him alone,” and when Vanessa reminds her that Richard asked for her, Maureen asserts that her brother “doesn’t know what he wants” (375). She remembers Richard buying the wedding topper for their parents on their anniversary, hoping that the perfection of the figurines would inspire their parents to fall in love again. The topper, though, was hollow. When Richard arrives, Maureen leaves them alone to speak.

Vanessa’s ex-husband looks like a shadow of who he once was. She thinks of the ways he tried to harm her, of how thoughtful and kind he could be, and of how he hoped to be saved from himself. Richard apologizes in earnest and asks Vanessa for another chance. Instead, Vanessa hands him her wedding and engagement rings. Richard tells her they could adopt and begins to cry. Maureen ushers Vanessa away, and she says her final goodbye to her ex-husband.

Maureen walks Vanessa out, and Vanessa tells her that Richard should do what he wants with the wedding album. In response, Maureen says it was lucky the photographer made it that day, and Vanessa realizes that it was Maureen who sabotaged her wedding. Suddenly, she recalls how Maureen spent every holiday with Richard and Vanessa, how she spent every birthday doing something with Richard she knew Vanessa wouldn’t like, and that she has no partner, no children, and maybe not even any friends. When Vanessa hands the album to Maureen, Vanessa notices that her former sister-in-law has slipped the wedding rings onto her fourth finger. Maureen tells her this is for “safekeeping.”

Part 3, Chapter 41 Summary

Vanessa takes a seat on Kate’s couch for the first time since her marriage. Kate’s and her places are the same as when Vanessa first went to speak with her, when Richard caught her and thought she was seeing someone else. The next time, she’d been careful to leave her phone at Charlotte’s before rushing to Kate’s. Vanessa tells Kate that she is divorced, and that he left her for another woman, but that the woman is safe from him. When Vanessa tells Kate that Richard is seeking help, Kate tentatively asks if Richard is no longer a threat to her. Vanessa affirms, hinting that she found the “perfect replacement.”

The first time Vanessa met Kate, Kate only asked vague questions, but the second time, Kate reached over to reveal a thick cuff bracelet on her wrist. The cuff didn’t surprise Vanessa at the time; she’d deliberately sought out Richard’s ex. During her third visit, Kate abruptly stood up as Vanessa wondered if she should leave Richard. Kate walked towards the kitchen, dragging her right foot along the floor and moving with a pronounced limp. When Kate returned, Vanessa noticed the extravagant jewelry Kate wore despite her simple clothing. Vanessa asked about her leg, and Kate told her she’d fallen down some stairs. She’d been in an argument with Richard, and when he went to bed, she’d left the apartment with a suitcase. She’d been careful to avoid the elevator, worried that the beep might wake him, but Richard hadn’t been asleep.

After the two women say goodbye, Vanessa remembers the woman who watched her pack up her classroom so long ago, and the sudden jerking movement, which might have been a limp.

Part 3, Chapter 42 Summary

Vanessa wakes in her bedroom to no longer dread mornings. She and Charlotte will leave in 10 days for Italy, and Vanessa will begin teaching pre-kindergarten again in the fall. As she walks through the city, Vanessa takes in her surroundings cheerfully. She decides to buy some flowers on her way home.

When Vanessa reaches the coffee shop, she sees a woman lift a mug to her lips; her wedding band gleams and surprises Vanessa. When Vanessa walks over to her, the woman stands without hesitation and wraps her in a hug. They sit, and Vanessa tells Sam that she’s happy to see her, noticing the beaded necklace Sam wears. Sam tells Vanessa she’s missed her. As Vanessa reaches into her bag to pull out her matching pair of “happy beads,” she thinks, “I’ve missed me, too” (384).

Part 3, Epilogue Summary

Emma follows Vanessa closely, watching as she stoops down for poppies before heading towards her apartment. She thinks about how Vanessa never realized that Emma was a threat; she saw only the illusion Emma had created (385). Rather than being the innocent young woman who fell into the trap Vanessa set to free herself of Richard, Emma thought she was spinning her own web (385). Emma calls the two of them “unwitting coconspirators” but wonders if Vanessa would want to know the truth of the girl who left Florida with a devastated family (386).

Emma remembers when she heard her parents yelling. She snuck out of bed to find Vanessa at the door and her mother’s glare at her father as she slammed the door. She remembers her father’s insistence that she came on to him and that it meant nothing (386). A month later, her father moved out. Her mother blamed her father for the affair, but at times she blamed the “pretty coed who’d enticed” him (387). Emma grew to blame Vanessa as well. So, after she’d looked her up once during a visit to New York, she decided that Vanessa was living “a golden life, one she didn’t deserve,” and that she’d intervene by getting close to her husband (387). She learned Richard’s schedule and placed herself in the coffee shop he visited every day. When their eyes met, she expected him to flirt with her and that she’d sleep with him and make sure his wife found out. Instead, he asked her to apply to be his secretary. A few months after she replaced his secretary, she “replaced his wife” (388).

Emma realizes she was wrong about everything as she looks down at a worn picture of her family. She was wrong about her father: Vanessa unknowingly confessed to Emma that she’d love a married man once but had been deceived by him. She was wrong about Richard, whom Vanessa tried to warn Emma about time and time again. Most of all, she was wrong about Vanessa. Emma decides that Vanessa should know the truth.

When Vanessa sees Emma approach, Emma apologizes and hands her the picture of her family. Recognition crosses Vanessa’s face. Vanessa is glad to know, saying that the “truth is the only way to move forward” (389). The two women leave each other in silence, lifting their hands in a mirror-like image.

Part 3, Chapter 40-Epilogue Analysis

Chapter 40 deals with the truth of Richard’s past, completing the complicated portrait of the troubled and terrible man. Themes of truth and perception permeate Vanessa’s conversation with Maureen. Maureen’s revelation about their parents’ marriage is intended to absolve Richard, but it only reveals the cycle of abuse Richard continued and his early obsessive behavior regarding relationships. The cake topper, because Richard bought it for his parents believing it would fix their marriage, symbolizes the perception of perfection; Richard “always wanted his life to look a certain way, like the idealized bride and groom on the cake” (375). However, like the figurines, Richard’s perfection is hollow.

The meeting unburdens Vanessa of her remaining ties to her marriage—she realizes that her husband can be both the man who “tried to erase her” and the man who worshipped her (376). In accepting this, she accepts the truth of their story. The chapter does not allow a neat goodbye, however. Instead, the reason behind Maureen’s strange behavior is alluded to as she slips Vanessa’s wedding ring onto her right-hand ring finger. In sabotaging Vanessa’s wedding and excitedly welcoming the task of caring for her brother, Maureen exhibits behavior that mirrors Richard’s but is even more unsettling because it is directed towards her brother.

Vanessa’s meeting with Kate in Chapter 41 ties together the remaining questions of Richard’s past. As Vanessa reveals that Kate, Richard’s ex, is the woman she met secretly in the city to speak about her marriage, she reveals how early her plan began. The meeting with Kate also emphasizes what exactly Vanessa might have faced if she had not concocted the plan she did. Kate is subtle in helping Vanessa, perhaps not wanting to spook her back into the arms of Richard. By carefully putting the cuff before Vanessa’s eyes and demonstrating her limp when Vanessa wonders if she should leave Richard, Kate wordlessly offers evidence of the dangerous predicament Vanessa is in. Kate, who suffered a fall that left her with a limp when trying to leave Richard, is verification of Richard’s violence and control; seeing Kate slowly instills in Vanessa’s mind that she cannot walk away from Richard unscathed. Female comradery is stressed during this encounter, as Vanessa suspects that Kate was watching her during the beginning of her relationship with Richard—though she never contacted Vanessa outright, Kate’s decision to watch over her suggests her own desire to protect women from Richard.

Vanessa is liberated fully from Richard in Chapter 42. The tone has shifted from dark and fearful to light and hopeful. Meeting Sam again marks the return of the former Vanessa, the self she missed dearly. As she dons her “happy beads,” Vanessa is signaling her alteration; she is no longer anxious, obsessed, or afraid but, finally, happy.

Truth and perception form the overwhelming theme in the Epilogue because of the revelation of Emma’s real identity. The section acts as a parallel to the Prologue, which shows Vanessa stalking her replacement, Emma. Now, it is Emma who is predatory, following her “unwitting coconspirator” closely. Though Vanessa thought she had trapped an innocent, Emma admits to her plan for revenge against Vanessa for having an affair with her father: “It felt like justice” (388). However, Emma had misinterpreted everything. Her realization emphasizes the temptations of false perceptions—how they are so easy to accept, and their potential to cause damage. The discovery explains her strange behavior and her anger over being pushed into the affair by Vanessa. She harbored her own guilt once she understood Vanessa’s innocence. The women, who have been positioned as foils and as parallels, part, their shared paths represented by their mirror-like goodbye.