62 pages • 2 hours read
Chandler BakerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
On April 12, Sloane is working with her door closed, as she has taken to doing since filing the lawsuit. She hears a ruckus outside, and Ardie’s assistant Anna tells Sloane that someone just jumped off the building. As receptionist Beatrice’s phones keep ringing, Anna receives a text that the jumper might have been Ames. Sirens blare. Bobbi calls the receptionist. Ames, Grace, and Ardie are not in their offices. Sloane tells Beatrice not to talk to Bobbi until Sloane figures out who died. On the sidewalk, a white sheet covers a body. Sloane calls Ames’s number and it rings from under the sheet. Quickly ending the call, Sloane thinks about their relationship. She remembers Ames’s kids, and then wonders why he did this.
On April 13, almost everyone who works on Ames’s floor is out. The detectives blame Sloane for not making them stay, but she claims she was not thinking straight. She wonders if she played a role in his death. As two detectives question Sloane, she asks if they always do this for suicide cases. They inform her that they haven’t yet ruled out foul play: Ames did not leave a note, had fresh injuries, and left blood on the balcony. Sloane asks if they are insinuating that Ames was pushed and starts to think quickly about how much information to give the detectives. The detectives ask Sloane to tell them her story from the beginning.
The chapter ends with an opinion piece from The Dallas Morning News claiming that Ames is the first victim of a feminist vengeance. The author accuses women of pretending to be victims when really, they are perpetrators.
The night of Ames’s death, Grace puts on her lingerie and has sex with Liam for the first time since her daughter’s birth. As they have sex, she thinks about telling him what she did earlier in the day. The sex hurts—she knew it would, and that’s why she wanted to do it, as a kind of atonement.
After they finish, Liam asks her if she is doing okay, given the day’s events. Grace claims to be fine, but inside she is furious at Liam. She tries to remind herself that he is a perfect husband. Grace sneaks out to smoke a cigarette. She wonders if things would’ve happened differently if Ames hadn’t texted her, “I thought we were friends” (317). Using mouthwash to hide the cigarette smell, Grace wakes Liam up, saying that Emma Kate is crying and needs to be fed. Secretly, Grace stopped pumping three days ago and has been using formula. Grace gets into bed, and stays there for two days.
Ardie knows that Ames’s death is the best possible PR for his image. On April 14, she confronted a group of young men in the office talking about how their female colleagues should feel guilty. Later, she found a note in her office that said “bitch” and wondered if it was from them. Ames’s death gave people “permission to come to his defense” (320). Women have stopped texting to avoid any liability. When Katherine and Ardie happen to be in the bathroom at the same time, Katherine tells Ardie that she was honest with the police. She also tells Ardie that Ames asked to meet with her before he died. She is afraid that Grace saw her looking for him. Ardie has also been analyzing everything she did before his death. She and Sloane are pausing their lawsuit. Katherine complains that she feels her career is cursed, but Ardie says it will be okay.
The chapter ends with Sloane’s police interview transcript. Sloane once joked that it would be easier to kill Ames than get justice. The detective points out that Sloane, Ardie, Katherine, and Grace were all caught on elevator security cam footage around the time of Ames’s death. Sloane tells them that this is normal for an office setting.
On April 17, Sloane sees her colleague Cosette in the Truviv lobby. The two women went to college together; later, Sloane helped Cosette become a relationship partner with Truviv, because she believed in helping women. Cosette reveals to Sloane that she is handling the harassment suit. Sloane is shocked because Cosette is not a litigator. Although Cosette wants to believe Sloane’s accusations, Truviv is a big partner. Upset, Sloane reminds Cosette that she got her this big job in the first place. Cosette offers to assist Sloane in finding a new job should she need one in return. As Cosette walks off, Sloane calls her a bitch.
Ames’s death is the perfect pretext for everyone who wants to blame and distrust women: If Ames’s death is ruled a suicide, the office women would be seen as guilty for bullying him into it; if it is ruled a homicide, the women will become the prime suspects. An opinion piece in The Dallas Morning News accuses those coming forward about sexual harassment of engaging in a witch hunt: “just like in Salem, those leading the charge have been allergic to cold, hard facts (likely because there are none or they are too inconvenient to bear repeating), and have instead focused on how those accused are making them feel” (314). The author compares the women to hysterical Puritans accusing their neighbors of witchcraft and relies on the trope of women being irrational and overemotional, suicidal feelings and emotions about being publicly accused of sexual assault.
The novel’s mystery genre side comes to the fore from this section onward, as readers scrutinize every detail about the women as evidence of their guilt or innocence. Grace’s desire for painful sex and her intimation that something she did earlier that day requires atonement suggests that she had some sort of involvement in Ames’s death. Grace and Ardie’s absence from their offices when Ames jumped or was pushed is suspect, as is Sloane’s decision to allow all employees working on that floor—each of whom is a possible witness—to leave without talking to the police. Finally, Katherine’s admission that she was looking for Ames—and her claim that he is the one who summoned her—also makes it plausible that she is covering up something sinister.
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