A Simple Favor

Stephanie tells her readers that a body believed to be Emily’s has been found. Stephanie and Sean decide he will tell Nicky on a day when, if he wants to, he can come play with Miles afterward. Afterward, Nicky’s therapist suggests that they give up some of Emily’s possessions, but Sean refuses. He and Stephanie both believe that Emily’s death was an accident.

Stephanie realizes that if Emily’s death was an accident, the insurance company owes Sean and Nicky money. They scatter Emily’s ashes in the woods, and Sean invites Stephanie and Miles, but she feels guilty for being in love with him. They are shocked by the autopsy, which reports long-term damage from alcohol and drug abuse. Stephanie protests that if Emily was abusing drugs, they would have known, but Sean isn’t sure. She begins to question everything she knows about Emily, including what kind of friend she is if she doesn’t know these things.

One night, Nicky turns on Stephanie in anger; afterward, Stephanie and Sean begin to kiss while watching television. When Stephanie and Sean finally sleep together, it is everything Stephanie hopes and reminds her of a time before Davis. Although they keep their affair secret from the children, Stephanie begins to wonder about their future as a family. Sometimes she feels guilty, but then she questions what is so wrong about their relationship.

Stephanie feels like Emily’s ghost is present. She and Sean focus on Nicky, which she thinks Emily would want, but Stephanie then questions how much Emily cared about her son.

Stephanie reflects that Miles is mature about death even though he was young when Davis and Chris died. She hopes that he will be able to help Nicky; for months after her husband and half-brother died, she and Miles suffered. Davis and Chris didn’t like each other, but they pretended to for her sake. One day, they bet on the model of a car, deciding that the loser would buy steaks for their barbeque. They drove to the butcher together. Miles begged to go, but Stephanie said no and is grateful every day for that decision. When a truck crowded Davis’s car on the road, he swerved and hit a tree, killing them both. She reminds her readers to treasure every day with loved ones.

The real story is that Davis and Chris hated each other—they couldn’t have been more different, and they were always fighting. That day, Stephanie was the one who suggested they go to the butcher together. After they left, when the police came to the door, Stephanie thought they had gotten into a fight. After the police leave, she finds a note on her bathroom mirror, in Davis’s handwriting, that says, “I’m sick of all the lying” (111). Near it is a photo of Stephanie and Chris, torn in half. Stephanie burns the note and the photo, then passes out and hits her head. When she comes to, she is bleeding, Miles is screaming, and Stephanie feels like a monster.

Stephanie knows what Davis meant in his note—he knew that Stephanie and Chris had been sleeping together for years. They tried to stop seeing each other but started again. Chris and Stephanie continued their affair until she got pregnant with Miles and had sex only once since then. She never told Davis about the affair, but he knew.

The first time Davis and Chris met, they argued, and the tone of their relationship was set. When Stephanie invites Chris to a barbeque, she can’t help the joy on her face when he arrives, and Davis sees it. That night, he asks about their relationship, and, although she denies it, Davis knows she is lying. Stephanie thinks that things will change after Miles is born, but her relationship with Chris is even more forbidden, so more tempting.

After the accident, Stephanie and Miles go to Davis’s funeral. The following day, Stephanie flies to Madison for Chris’s funeral. She is the only relative to attend, and she notices an old girlfriend of Chris’s, who looks like her. After the funeral, she goes to the bar with his friends. Later, she takes a friend of Chris’s back to her hotel room. She kisses him, but then throws up. He puts her in bed, gives her his phone number, and leaves.

The next morning, Stephanie panics and rushes home, feeling like something bad is going to happen. She swears that if she makes it home alive, and Miles is okay, she will stop making bad choices. Stephanie keeps her promise until Emily disappears and she gets to know Sean.

Stephanie hopes her readers will hear her out with an open mind. She and Sean have been brought together by their loss and are living together between both houses. Sean is working part-time, and Nicky, who is still angry, is beginning to hate and sabotage Stephanie. Stephanie doesn’t tell Sean because she doesn’t want to worry him further. She asks her readers for their advice on how to deal with the situation.

Sean is working more, which means that Nicky spends more time with Stephanie. He is nice to everyone except her, but one day, he comes home from school a seemingly different boy. He is thoughtful and charming, but something about his behavior makes her nervous. She can tell that Nicky and Miles are hiding something from her.

One night, when she tucks Nicky in, he says he saw Emily that day. The therapist had warned them that something like this might happen as Nicky works to accept Emily’s death. However, he insists that he saw her outside the school, and she said, “See you tomorrow. Tell Stephanie hello” (131). He tells her he has seen Emily before and told Miles, who didn’t believe him.

That night, she tells Sean, who worries about Nicky. The next time Nicky says he saw Emily, Stephanie explains how he might have imagined it. He says that she touched him and told him to tell Stephanie and Sean that she would never leave Nicky again. When Stephanie kisses him goodnight, she can smell Emily’s perfume in his hair.

She calls Sean, panicked, but he is angry when she explains. She realizes that he will never love her more than Emily. Sean still has a bottle of Emily’s perfume, and thinks that Nicky found it and, missing his mother, sprayed himself. Although the explanation isn’t quite logical, Stephanie wants to believe it’s true. One night not long after, Stephanie and Miles are eating alone, and he mentions that he saw Emily that day. He is sure that it was her.

Stephanie asks her readers to help her identify a French movie she remembers, in which “a sadistic high school principal and his sexy mistress” plot to frighten his wife to death (137).

Stephanie’s readers have given her the title of the movie: Diabolique. She cautions her readers that if they don’t like Patricia Highsmith, they probably won’t like this film. As she watches the movie, Stephanie realizes that she has been lucky with men, in comparison with the man in Diabolique. The movie is full of twists and turns and gets darker and darker.

Stephanie confesses that once again, her blog post was not true. While watching Diabolique, she spent the entire time wondering if Emily and Sean are tricking her. Needing his reassurance, she takes Miles and Nicky to Sean’s house. She asks if Emily could be alive and tells him what Miles said about seeing her. When Stephanie begins to cry, Sean realizes that this has been difficult for her. He suggests Stephanie and Miles move into his house full-time. She finds herself unable to blog often because there is so much she can’t blog about. Finally, she convinces Sean to put Emily’s things in storage.

Stephanie sends a message to the “moms community” that she has decided to stop blogging. She can’t be honest about her life and knows her readers will recognize her inauthenticity. She is also becoming obsessed with finding out more about Emily, and each day, she looks for clues about Emily in her house.

Stephanie finds it odd that there are no pictures of Emily from before her marriage. One day she finds a blue dress and heels in a back closet. She tries it on and masturbates, pretending to be Emily. In one drawer, she finds birthday cards from Emily’s mother. The return address is in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Stephanie steals an envelope. She knows that Emily’s mother has dementia but thinks that she might find something out.

One day Sean calls, needing a phone number from his home office. When Stephanie finds it, in the same drawer she finds Emily’s sapphire and diamond ring. She puts the box back and cries, knowing that she will never tell Sean she found the ring. She stops looking for clues about Emily and convinces herself that Nicky and Miles were just pretending. She cooks healthy meals for them, imagining that it would make Emily happy. Nicky stops acting out, and Stephanie decides she will go back to blogging soon. Life is quiet. After Thanksgiving dinner, Stephanie and Sean put Nicky and Miles to bed, and then talk about taking a vacation for Christmas. She is beginning to think of it as her home, not Emily’s home.

Not long after, when Stephanie is home alone, a call comes through on the landline. It is Emily, who tells Stephanie that she is outside, watching. She hangs up, and Stephanie feels like she is in Emily’s house again. Later, she convinces herself she dreamed it. The next day, she goes out into the woods, where Emily must have been standing, and looks into the window.