53 pages • 1 hour read
Catherine SteadmanSomething in the Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 34-37Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 34 Summary: “A Damsel in Distress”
At home, the USB is gone. Erin tears the house apart looking for it. Dizzy from her search, she opens a box of truffles to get her blood sugar up for the baby and finds the USB “nestled on the bottom deck of the truffle box” (283).
Mark calls, and she confronts him about hiding the USB. He says he hid it to protect her and makes her promise not to look at it. Erin hangs up and plugs the USB into her computer. It’s full of encrypted files. She calls Eddie, tells him about the files, and asks if he knows anyone who can help decrypt them. Eddie tells her to forget it, that whatever’s on that drive is “bad stuff they don’t want people reading” (288). Eddie supplies Erin with a gun for protection. She learns how to use it as best she can and then sends a text with the iPhone, telling whoever’s on the other end she’s ready to trade the USB.
Chapter 35 Summary: “Point and Squeeze”
Erin sets up the trade location in Norfolk. She goes out a day early to scout the area and practice with the gun. When she’s as prepared as she can be, she buries the USB with the plan to release its coordinates after she gets the money and heads back to her hotel “to get an early night” (299).
Chapter 36 Summary: “Something in the Dark”
Erin wakes in the middle of the night to find there’s “someone in the room” (300). She feigns sleep until her phone lights up with a text from Mark saying he knows where she is. The intruder is Patrick—the man from outside the prison. He charges, and Erin attacks him with the lamp from the nightstand. Erin is sure he’s going to kill her; she passes out.
Chapter 37 Summary: “Mark Is Coming”
When Erin wakes, she’s locked in the bathroom with a bloody gash on the side of her head. She remembers Mark’s text and that he can track her phone from her computer. Sickened by the idea Mark’s headed straight to the plane people, Erin busts through the bathroom’s glass door and sets out to save him.
Erin finds Mark talking to a man in the woods who isn’t Patrick. The two search for something—probably the USB. Erin watches as Mark finds it with the air of “a child with treasure” (310). Mark makes the deal—USB for the money—with the other man, and with a sick feeling, Erin realizes Mark “doesn’t care about me at all” (312). Ever since Bora Bora, Mark has set up Erin to fall and distanced himself to get the money. The other man asks for the last coordinates—the location of the downed plane, which was part of the deal Erin set up. Mark doesn’t know them. When he doesn’t answer, the other man draws a gun. Mark pulls out Erin’s gun, which he only could have gotten from Patrick. Mark jerks, accidentally firing Erin’s gun. The other man fires in response and hits Mark. With a second bullet to make sure Mark’s dead, the man leaves.
Erin emerges from her hiding spot and goes to Mark. He gives her a cold, uncaring look before he dies. Erin runs back into town and calls Eddie from a pay phone. Eddie tells her to bury the bodies and then call him back. Erin steals a shovel from a nearby house and ends the chapter on the somber note “and you know what happens next” (320).
Chapters 34-37 Analysis
Mark hides the USB in the truffles to mess with Erin’s head. Rather than wilt, Erin gets angry, continuing the growth she showed in Chapter 33. Mark’s actions don’t make sense now, and she questions both his words and motives. In Chapter 35, she fears guns but takes one to protect herself in the final confrontation. The USB exchange is the final conflict, and Erin wants it over and done so she can take the money, put crime behind, and live her life. Her decision to arm herself shows she’s ready to fight for what is most important to her—her life, safety, and family.
Erin goes to Eddie for help in both Chapters 34 and 37. Eddie begins to replace Mark here—Erin subconsciously trusts Eddie more than she does her husband. Her reliance on Eddie, rather than Mark, foreshadows how Eddie comes to be like family, as well as Mark’s betrayal and death. Eddie represents Erin’s new life. Mark, by contrast, loses his significance and becomes associated with her old life.
Chapter 37 brings the revelation of Mark’s betrayal. Following Patrick’s arrival in Erin’s hotel room, Mark has Erin’s gun. From this, Erin understands Patrick works for Mark, which brings the extent of Mark’s lies crashing down around her. Mark’s elation at finding the USB shows he only cares about the money. Chapter 37 also brings the story full circle to Chapter 1. Mark’s death and the cold look he gives Erin before he dies make Erin the desperately sad woman she is in the novel’s opening scene. True to the thriller genre, Steadman does not describe the opening chapter’s events a second time. She lets memory fill in what happens between Chapters 33 and 34 before launching into the concluding chapters.
