Little Secrets

“Four hundred eighty-five days of this nightmare. Panic sets in. She takes a minute and does the deep-breathing exercises her therapist taught her until the worst of it passes and she can function. Nothing about anything feels normal anymore, but she’s better at faking it than she used to be.”

Marin struggles to invest in her own healing 16 months after Sebastian’s disappearance. She has begun to attend therapy and support group, but she privately knows that she doesn’t actually want to recover from her loss. She feigns investment in her healing to convince others that she is okay; meanwhile, she allows her grief to fester for fear of losing Sebastian for good.

“Lila and Kyle’s marriage has been in trouble for as long as Marin has been attending group. Divorce rates for couples with missing children? Exorbitantly high. At least Lila and her husband still fight. Marin and Derek don’t. You have to care at least a little to yell at someone, and he has to care about you at least a little to yell back.”

Marin’s support group friends’ marital discussion foreshadows Marin’s discovery of Derek Machado’s affair. Marin knows that she and Derek aren’t doing well. However, she doesn’t know that her friends’ marital complexities are in fact an omen of the complexities she will soon face in her own relationship. At the same time, this reflective passage captures Marin’s difficulties to engage with her husband since Sebastian’s disappearance.

“Marin blinks. She heard the words the PI said clearly, and she doesn’t need them repeated, though perhaps she needs Castro to communicate them a different way. They sit in silence for a few seconds. Marin feels like she’s waiting for a punchline that isn’t coming. What the hell is the woman talking about, affair? That can’t be why she called Marin in. That isn’t why she was hired.”

Vanessa Castro’s revelations about Derek’s affair add another layer of tension to the narrative. Marin is shocked by Castro’s discovery because she has told herself that she and Derek are capable of moving through their grief together and healing their marriage. Derek’s affair changes how Marin has been regarding her relationship and complicates her understanding of herself.

“A strange thing happens when you’re going through something terrible. It’s as if your body and mind separate, and you cease to become a whole person. Your body goes through the motions of what you need to do to survive—eat, sleep, excrete, repeat—while your brain further divides into compartments of Things You Need to Do Now, and Things You Should Process Later When You’re in Your Right Mind.”

Marin’s sorrow over Sebastian’s disappearance and anger over Derek’s infidelity complicate her sense of Identity and Self-Worth After Personal Tragedy. Marin is overtaken by anger after learning about Derek’s affair, an emotion that complicates her pre-existing grief and drives her to irrational, impulsive behaviors. Implying that she is currently not in her “Right Mind” also alludes to her unreliability as a narrator and her loosened grip on reality.

“Marin steps to the side, clutching the cookie, still warm inside its waxy paper bag. Every movement makes her feel smaller, insignificant, useless. For six months, this woman has been sleeping with her husband. While Marin was grieving, blaming herself, beating herself up, and self-medicating with all manner of pharmaceuticals and alcohol, Derek’s been self-medicating with…her. Six months, and she has no idea who the hell Marin is.”

When Marin visits McKenzie Li’s coffee shop, she feels silly and invisible rather than powerful and dominant. She wanted to see McKenzie in person in to garner a sense of control over her marital conflicts. Coming face to face with Derek’s lover only deepens her self-hatred and deflates her self-worth.

“With Sal, it’s okay to be imperfect. She doesn’t have to have her shit together all the time, or ever. She probably depends on him for emotional support way more than she should. Who would have thought that who you love and who you feel safe with might not be the same person?”

Marin and Sal Palermo’s longtime friendship contributes to the novel’s explorations of Conflict and Loyalty in Intimate Relationships. Marin still loves and relies upon Sal but has no intention of reigniting their former relationship. The way that she treats Sal is often careless and selfish. She sees Sal as an important part of her life but fails to understand Sal’s attachment to her and the lengths to which he will go to win her back. The pain she causes him will soon drive Sal to irrational behaviors, too.

“Derek doesn’t look up when she returns with their food; he’s consumed with his phone. He’s consumed with his phone for work the way she’s consumed with her phone for everything nonwork, and he doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s typing, so she doesn’t say anything. Before she sits down, she tries to peek at what he’s looking at. But this, of course, he senses, and he tilts his phone away so Kenzie can’t see the screen. She hates when he does that. It reminds her that he has secrets. She should know. She’s one of them.”

Derek and McKenzie’s affair is defined by an imbalance of power. McKenzie has pursued the relationship because she wants something from Derek. However, the longer they’re together and the worse Derek treats her, the more attached McKenzie realizes she has become to him. His negligence and withholding are familiar to McKenzie due to her past relationships. However, Derek’s behavior still has the power to hurt her and compromise her self-worth.

“It’s a woman who’s trying to steal the last bit of family she has left. If that makes her a monster, so be it. In the past fourteen hours, she’s already imagined McKenzie’s death a dozen different ways—getting hit by a bus, falling out of a window, falling into a giant sinkhole, getting shoved off a goddamned cliff—and each fantasy provides her with a moment of immense relief.”

Marin directs her anger at McKenzie instead of at her husband because she’s afraid of losing Derek. Her obsessive desire to seek revenge against Derek’s lover plays into the trope of women pitting themselves against other women to win a man’s affection. Furthermore, Marin’s desire to eliminate McKenzie furthers the novel’s explorations of The Moral Complexities of Revenge. 

“Married men are exhausting. They have a way of sucking all the oxygen out of the room when you’re with them. You’re always on their schedule, on guard for changes in locations and times to meet. There are only specific places you can go, and only for so long before there’s somewhere else they have to be. Their families are their priorities. And you’re not family.”

McKenzie’s relationship history threatens her sense of self. She has been working as a professional girlfriend since she was in college, but she still hasn’t grown accustomed to the distorted power dynamics inherent to these relationships. This is because McKenzie wants a more balanced dynamic with someone but doesn’t know how to achieve such an equal relationship. Her childhood trauma has particularly influenced how she sees and engages with her personal relationships.

“‘I believe in forgiveness,’ Lorna said with a decisive nod. ‘You’re a good girl, too, Marin. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned after being married for so long, it’s that you must always protect your children. Always. That comes before everything, and I didn’t do that with my son. He protected me, when it should have been the other way around. I think it’s why he don’t trust people now. Why he won’t let himself get close to anyone. Except you,’ she added with a small smile. ‘You have to look out for him, back in the city. Make sure he don’t get lonely.’”

Lorna Palermo’s words about relationships and forgiveness inspire Marin to reflect on Conflict and Loyalty in Intimate Relationships. She feels a sense of camaraderie with Lorna because Lorna similarly failed to protect her son from harm. Therefore, Lorna’s remarks compel Marin to delete the Shadow app and to let go of her desire for revenge, if temporarily.

“Derek asked her once what the point of it all was, and why she cared so much if fifty thousand strangers liked her. But it’s not about being liked. People can hate you because you’re famous yet still care what you’re up to, who you’re dating, what you’re wearing, where you’re going. A hate-follow is still a follow. It’s about visibility, the importance of being seen. These days, who you are online is almost as good as who you are in real life.”

McKenzie’s obsession with social media is a manifestation of her hurt and loneliness. McKenzie posts on her pages every day because she wants to be seen. She desperately desires validation in her personal relationships, and social media grants her the illusion of it.

“‘Don’t be an idiot,’ J.R. snapped. ‘You’re hearing what you want to hear, not what I’m saying. I’m telling you straight up what I can and can’t do. Your asshole father never did that—he made you promises he couldn’t keep. You’re eighteen, but you’re wiser than your years […]. Use your brain, not your heart. You have to learn to take care of yourself, or you won’t make it in this fucking world. Don’t depend on me, you understand? Don’t depend on anyone.’”

McKenzie is overcome by heartbreak when J.R. ends their relationship. The way that J.R. speaks to her represents the way that all the men in McKenzie’s life have treated her. J.R. acts as if he has McKenzie’s best interests in mind, but meanwhile, he is unkind and negligent. J.R.’s words also foreshadow the lessons McKenzie will have to learn about self-care and self-worth over the course of the chapters to come.

“‘There’s no way they’re going to last,’ he said, and it sounded like he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to her. ‘What they’ve been through, it’s too much. At some point they’re going to separate the whole way. It sounds like they’re getting there. I’m thinking there could be…’ He paused, choosing his words. ‘…an opportunity in it for you.’”

Sal’s attachment to Marin fuels his schemes to break up her family and win her back. The way that he talks to McKenzie about Marin and Derek’s relationship in this scene foreshadows the novel’s twist ending, which reveals that Sal is Sebastian’s kidnapper. This passage captures the ways in which longing, loneliness, and pain might drive the individual to irrational behavior.

“She blinks back tears of frustration and disappointment. Dumped by Derek, and now abandoned by J.R., who’s gone and gotten himself an actual girlfriend. It’s times like this when she’s reminded of how few people she has in her life who she can rely on. Fifty thousand followers on social media, and not one single friend who’ll come by when she’s having a rough night.”

McKenzie’s personal tragedies in her past complicate her intimate relationships in the present. McKenzie consistently feels overlooked by those with whom she is supposed to be close. When Sal refuses to let her come over for the night, McKenzie begins to make parallels between his and Derek’s negligent behavior. These relational complexities reinforce McKenzie’s loneliness.

“It wouldn’t take a psychologist to understand that Kenzie’s an escape for him. Their relationship has always been highly compartmentalized. When Derek is with her, he doesn’t have to think about his wife, or his missing son, or this house, or any of the things he feels obligated to, and responsible for.”

McKenzie starts to realize how little she means to Derek when she breaks into his and Marin’s house. Before doing so, McKenzie could pretend as if she were more important to Derek. Being in the house makes her realize that she holds no weight in his present or future. Their affair complicates McKenzie’s self-worth.

“Neither of them are perfect. Neither of them are without blame. Nothing is fixed. But finally, it feels like they’ve turned a page. It’s the way her husband is touching her knee, singing along to Nirvana. It’s the way she’s not cringing because he’s touching her. It feels like them again. She feels like herself again. It feels like the chance for a fresh start.”

Marin relies upon her marriage to give her a sense of emotional stability and self-worth. Therefore, when Derek starts engaging with her again, she becomes hopeful that their lives are returning to normal. She feels confident in who she is again, too, because she has understood herself according to her marriage for years.

“It should never have gone this far. This only confirms why she and Sal can never be together. They are not good for each other. He is the id to her ego, the devil to her angel, the magnetic force that steers her moral compass in the wrong direction. She may hate McKenzie Li, but McKenzie Li is someone’s child. Somebody loves her. Somebody will cry for her when she’s dead.”

Marin realizes the moral quandaries that her desire for revenge against McKenzie has caused her after Thomas Payne’s body is found. Thomas’s death grants Marin the empathy to see McKenzie as a human instead of a clichéd villain in her story. This moment marks a turning point in Marin’s storyline and ushers her towards internal change.

“Derek is trying, that much is clear, and it’s wonderful and confusing all at the same time. The crevasse that opened between them after Sebastian disappeared is still there, though perhaps not quite as wide. There’s love and affection mixed in with the anger and resentment, and it will take time to undo all the months of not connecting with her husband to get back on solid ground. But for the first time in a long time, she’d like to get there. For the first time since their son went missing, their marriage feels like a priority.”

Marin wants to believe that she and Derek can save their marriage because she relies upon her family to feel safe and known. The construction of these lines enacts Marin’s emotional urgency and therefore her desperation to restore her life to its former order. Despite Derek’s infidelity, Marin believes that she needs Derek in order to be herself.

“Marin holds her for a while longer, until Simon comes looking for them and it’s time to go back inside. And all Marin can think, as she watches her grieving friend circulate around the small donut shop, making sure her guests have sandwiches and vegetables and donuts and coffee, is that she resents the other woman for saying it. Marin resents her for feeling it, for confessing it, and for it being true. Frances is free. Marin is jealous, and she hates herself for it.”

After the police find Frances Payne’s son’s body, Marin envies Frances’s closure. Despite the tragedy of the death, Frances no longer has to suffer uncertainty and false hope. Marin cares about Frances, but her own pain keeps her from truly celebrating Frances’s relief. Therefore, Marin’s ability to relate to others remains distorted by her loss and grief.

“You always want everything on your terms, Marin, and it’s not fucking fair. You want to stay married to your husband, but you’re constantly pushing him away. You want me as your best friend, yet you have sex with me when you feel like shit. You want to be known as this successful businesswoman, but you still act like a goddamned trophy wife. You say you can’t bear to live with not knowing what happened to Sebastian, but if you ever find out he’s dead, you’ll jump off a fucking bridge.”

Sal’s anger towards Marin over their imbalanced dynamic furthers the novel’s explorations of Conflict and Loyalty in Intimate Relationships. For years, Sal has been holding out hope that Marin will leave Derek and come back to him. In this dialogue, he unleashes his anger when he realizes that Marin doesn’t want to be with him. His furious diatribe reveals a different, more volatile side of Sal’s character, which foreshadows the later revelations concerning the kidnapping.

“‘So this isn’t really about the money for you, is it?’ Kenzie feels a tingle go through her. ‘This is personal. What is this, some kind of sick game you’re playing to try to break them up? To, what, punish her for daring to leave you for the guy she married and had a kid with?’ Another thought occurs to her, and the next words are out of her mouth before she can stop herself. ‘Holy shit, J.R., did you take their kid?’”

McKenzie and Sal’s conversation reveals the novel’s unexpected plot twist. McKenzie has been involved with Sal’s schemes because she feels justified in punishing Derek for hurting her. However, in this scene, she begins to understand the distorted complexities of Sal’s behavior. Her realization in this moment marks a turning point in her storyline and character development.

“‘I don’t know what I did wrong, but I killed him, Marin,’ Derek says, his voice strangled, as if her fingers really were around his neck. ‘I killed our little boy. And I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell you because I knew if you knew, I would be killing you, too.’”

Derek’s revelation regarding Sebastian’s ransom is one of the narrative’s climactic events. Derek has kept this secret from Marin because he has been afraid of exposing his mistakes and adding to her grief. However, his deceit has only worsened his marriage and precluded the couple’s healing.

“She sprints to him as he drops the teddy bear and runs to her, his small arms outstretched, and it really is just like in her dreams, only this time they make contact, because he’s here, he’s real, he’s alive, he’s safe. And Marin’s heart—which was led away from her four hundred ninety-four days ago—comes back to her.”

Finding her son again grants Marin the closure that she has been seeking throughout the novel. Marin and Sebastian’s reunion resolves the novel’s primary conflict and ushers the narrative towards its denouement and resolution.