The Overnight Guest

Wylie Lark enters Stauffer’s Grocery Store to stock up in preparation for an incoming winter storm. She listens to a podcast and tries to avoid interacting with the locals as she shops. When she makes eye contact with the cashier, she leaves her items behind and exits the store. She receives a call from her ex-husband but accidentally drops her phone in a puddle, shattering it. Wylie has avoided his phone calls, knowing that he wants her to reconcile with her 14-year-old son, Seth, and return home to finish writing her book.

Wylie drives through a growing winter storm to the farmhouse she has rented for six weeks; the farmhouse is the site of an unsolved true-crime case from 20 years earlier. The house is very isolated, especially with the snowfall; it is more than 100 years old and only has water and electricity for amenities. Inside, she unsuccessfully searches for rice to soak the moisture from her phone before building a fire under the watchful gaze of Tas, a coonhound stray that she has inadvertently adopted. She makes sure all the windows and doors are locked, checks the location of her 9mm handgun, then tries to review the manuscript she has written about the Doyle murders. She struggles to make revisions, feeling the story is yet unfinished, so instead she looks at files of other true crime cases she may write about.

Later that night, Wylie lets Tas outside to use the bathroom, but he does not immediately return to the house. She goes into the storm to search for him and finds him at the end of the lane next to something small and bloody. Wylie realizes it is a young boy, covered with ice from the storm.

A little girl and her mother make Easter decorations out of colored paper in their basement home, which consists of one room and a bathroom. The next morning, the girl is gifted a paper Easter basket containing two Jolly Ranchers and a package of cinnamon gum. Later, her father arrives with beer and a plastic bag. The girl looks out their small window while her father sexually assaults her mother; the child doesn’t understand what is happening. He then gives the child a chocolate rabbit before leaving. The girl’s mother coaxes her into eating it, saying it is from the Easter Bunny and not from her father; the two share the chocolate.

Blake County, Iowa, is a tranquil county; the town of Burden has an exceptionally low crime rate. It is agricultural and idyllic. Josie wakes up on August 11 and does her chores quickly in anticipation of her best friend’s arrival that afternoon. She notices the family dog, Roscoe, is missing, but this is not out of the ordinary. Josie helps her father, William, repair a fence and observes a strange truck driving back and forth along their road, but she assumes the driver is one of her brother’s friends. Josie and her brother, Ethan, get into a fight when Ethan refuses to help look for Roscoe; this fight spurs a larger reflection of how moody and rebellious Ethan has become in recent months.

Becky Allen is dropped off by her mother, Margo. The girls go to Josie’s room and begin discussing the State Fair but are interrupted when they hear Ethan and William argue. Josie’s mother, Lynne, intercedes before they can embarrass themselves in front of Margo. After dinner, Ethan is tasked with bringing a pie to his grandparents’ house down the road; the girls see him walking with a shotgun and join him in his truck. Becky begins flirting with Ethan and takes an action figure off his dashboard. After dropping off the pie, Ethan takes the girls to go shooting with his friend Brock Cutter, directly violating his mother’s orders. Brock fondles Becky and mocks Josie for not wanting to shoot the gun. Becky asks Ethan to show her how to shoot, sparking jealousy in Josie.

As William approaches, Brock drives away. William yells at Ethan for behaving inappropriately with his gun and tries to take the weapon, but Ethan insists the gun was a gift from his grandfather, so William has no right to take it. William instead takes his truck keys and drives the girls home, leaving Ethan to walk. As they drive away, Ethan fires a shot into the air, starling all three of them.

Shocked at the appearance of the child, Wylie falls, injuring her arm. The boy is covered with a layer of ice and bleeding from his head. She picks him up and makes her laborious way back to the house, struggling to keep her balance in the wind and freezing rain. She falls a second time; the movement surprises the child, confirming he is alive. Once inside, Wylie tries the landline, but the storm has knocked out all phone service. The boy slowly warms and begins to cry when he sees blood on his hands. Wylie alternates between gentle and commanding as she tries to get him out of his wet clothes, chasing him into the living room; the boy begins to cry again, frightened and in pain.

Wylie goes to the kitchen to make hot chocolate, hoping to soothe the boy and coax him into communicating. When she returns to the living room, he has vanished.

In the basement, the unnamed little girl draws flowers for her mother, who is ill. That evening, the mother tells the father that she is pregnant, causing the father to storm out of the basement. The mother tells the little girl that she was pregnant twice before but had stillborn boys. The mother then tells the little girl that she knew she would live, so she gave her “the most beautiful name in the world” (52).

Josie and Becky search for Roscoe, walking past some of the local farms. They reach the Henley farm, where rows of rusted vehicles sit. They spot June Henley, a woman in her sixties who is dying of cancer; she gives the girls permission to search her property but warns them that her adult son, Jackson, is also around. Josie and Becky go in separate direction to search. When they reconvene, Josie spots Jackson, who had just spoken to Becky. The girls start back toward the Doyle farm but spot a light-colored pickup truck parked in the road. When the truck starts, the girls take off running the rest of the way home.

Lynne asks the girls about the truck, then wonders if they had seen Ethan. They make plans to leave for the State Fair early the next morning. The girls retire but overhear an argument when Ethan arrives home. William warns Ethan that he needs to start behaving and tells him that a local girl’s parents are threatening to call the police, believing that Ethan has been making harassing phone calls. William again tries to take Ethan’s gun, starting a physical altercation. Ethan leaves. Becky whispers consolations to Josie.

Wylie frantically searches the house until finding the boy behind the couch in the living room in the dry clothes she gave him. She collects his wet clothes, removes an action figure from his pocket, and puts the clothes in the dryer. Wylie then dresses in her winter gear, exiting the house in search of clues. She walks to the end of the lane and finds tire tracks; she follows them. After picking up a baby blanket fluttering over the snow, she sees debris that leads her to a truck in the ditch. Nearby, she discovers a woman entangled in a barbed wire fence.

Wylie tries to free the woman, who is severely injured. However, she cannot untangle her without causing further injury. The woman only minimally answers Wylie’s questions and seems both scared and defiant. Wylie sheds some of her layers and wraps the woman in them before leaving, promising to return with wire cutters.

By midnight, Becky and Josie have failed to fall asleep. They sneak out of the house and go to Josie’s trampoline, where they pretend to catch stars. When they hold hands, they do so with hands that bear matching scars from when they became “blood sisters” (73) by cutting their palms with a paring knife. They hear popping noises that Josie recognizes as gunfire. They walk back toward the house in time to hear a shot and see a corresponding flash of light in Josie’s parents’ window. As more gunfire goes off, Josie and Becky try to find a hiding place, accidentally startling the goats and causing them to bleat in distress. When Josie sees a dark figure with a gun exit the house, she grabs Becky’s hand and launches them into a sprint toward the cornfield. When Becky falls, Josie is too scared to stop—she keeps running into the cornfield even as a bullet grazes her arm. She runs through the rows of corn, followed by the assailant. She hides and waits for him to leave.

The little girl’s mother descends into illness as she suffers through a difficult pregnancy. The father grows increasingly violent in his attempts to force-feed the mother, culminating in him almost gagging the mother with a milkshake. The mother falls asleep after the father leaves, and the little girl finishes the milkshake. Later, the little girl is violently ill.