The Wife Between Us

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Prologue-Chapter 3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-9

Part 1, Chapters 10-12

Part 1, Chapters 13-15

Part 1, Chapters 16-18

Part 2, Chapters 19-21

Part 2, Chapters 22-24

Part 2, Chapters 25-27

Part 2, Chapters 28-30

Part 3, Chapters 31-33

Part 3, Chapters 34-36

Part 3, Chapters 37-39

Part 3, Chapter 40-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Part 3, Chapters 31-33 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Chapter 31 Summary

Vanessa hurries to escape Emma’s apartment before Richard arrives, fearing what he might do if he finds her. When she crawls into a cab, his overpowering lemony scent hangs in the air—he’s just left it. She marvels at the great flaw in her plan to escape her marriage to Richard: She was “sacrificing an innocent young woman” (296).

Vanessa remembers all the signs of Richard’s temper, beginning with the night she kissed Nick up until she confronted Richard about Duke. After the night of the gala, he no longer concealed his violence. That night, after slapping her, he lifted her up from the ground by her hair and whispered that he’d always be around. The next morning, Richard brought her breakfast in bed and promised to be home early that night with dinner. Later, Vanessa heard the doorbell but didn’t answer it. Richard called soon afterwards, sounding concerned, and told her to open the door. When she did, a courier handed her a package and eyed her deep purple bruises. Vanessa opened the package to find a gold cuff, perfectly sized to cover the bruises wrapping around her wrist. Over the next few years, she would collect lots of similar jewelry from what Richard called “misunderstandings.”

Now, Vanessa enjoys the exhilaration of having chosen anger over fear when it comes to Richard. Knowing that her ex-husband will want to punish her for her actions, Vanessa rushes to the bank to cash the check he gave her before he can cancel it. She then heads home, energized to move on to the next step in her plan.

Part 3, Chapter 32 Summary

Vanessa, dressed as Emma, rehearses introducing herself as Richard’s new fiancée and hopes to be convincing enough to pass by the cleaning crew in Richard’s office. She is hoping to find a “simple document” that will act as proof to help Emma believe Vanessa about the wine at the cocktail party. Until that night, Richard hadn’t found a reason to punish Vanessa in a while; a few days earlier, she had come home with light brown hair, intentionally breaking the first order Richard had given when they met. In order to punish her, Richard, knowing there was no wine in the cellar, had asked Vanessa in front of their guests to retrieve it so that when she returned without it, they would assume she had drank it. Vanessa had a plan of her own that night: to convince Richard’s friends that she “was a bit of a mess” and to convince both Emma and Richard that he deserved better (309). To do this, Vanessa intentionally told the caterers to arrive an hour after the party began, pretended to drink too much, and then switched the music from classical to disco while shouting and dancing. After the party, Richard gave Vanessa bruises that lasted for weeks and, for the first time, he didn’t buy her jewelry to cover them.

After sneaking into Richard’s office, Vanessa successfully finds her evidence: an itemized credit card receipt with “Sotheby’s Wine, $3,150 refund” (316). Pocketing it, she turns Emma’s picture on Richard’s desk to face the wall and leaves.

Part 3, Chapter 33 Summary

Vanessa wakes the next day feeling better than she has in years. She and Charlotte go to visit Charlotte’s late husband’s grave. At the cemetery, Charlotte tells Vanessa that she’s sorry that Vanessa and Richard were unable to have children, given that Vanessa had wanted them so badly. Vanessa tells her aunt that she and her ex-husband weren’t meant to have kids anyway.

Vanessa recalls the arduous process of fertility treatment and the doctor’s recommendation that Richard get his sperm tested again. Richard made an appointment, and Vanessa decided to surprise him there to show support. However, when she called the office, she learned Richard had canceled. Vanessa was sure that something must have come up at work, but when he arrived home that night, he told her his sperm had tested fine. The next day, Vanessa bought a journal to keep track of Richard’s deceits.

That night, Vanessa takes a picture of the credit card statement and texts it to Emma, hoping to plant the seed of doubt.

Part 3, Chapters 31-33 Analysis

Chapter 31 focuses on the symbolism of jewelry in Vanessa’s and Richard’s relationship. After Richard’s first explicitly violent outburst, his gift of a gold bracelet works dualistically: It acts as an apologetic offering and covers the evidence of his assault. Symbolically, it represents Richard’s preference for the appearance of perfection. Though the chapter emphasizes Richard’s need to control perceptions, it also emphasizes Vanessa’s growth in reacting to this propensity in Richard. Rather than cowering from Richard’s reaction to her delivering the letter to Emma, Vanessa swiftly makes her next move, anticipating Richard’s punishment. She thinks: “I have allowed fear to dominate me. But as I sit in the cab, I realize another emotion is rising to the surface: anger” (301). The emotion is cathartic because she had spent years swallowing it to survive. Every time Vanessa outsmarts and outmaneuvers her husband, she reasserts her independence and chooses courage over cowardice.

The shocking events of the cocktail party are the central conflict of Chapter 33. As Vanessa dresses as Emma, the novel emphasizes the similarities between the two women, who appear physically interchangeable. For Vanessa, thinking about the party brings to mind how she orchestrated the affair but never saw Emma as anything other than a replacement for herself until it was too late. Vanessa’s admission that she learned to do “acts of service” to cultivate Richard’s benevolence and that she “was under no illusions about how dangerous [he] could be when he” felt her slipping away reveals that her perceptiveness and performances kept her safe from her husband (307). It also underscores that Vanessa had spun an intricate web to pull her replacement towards Richard, her careful planning of every detail revealing her to be both calculating and full of nerve.

The absence of the wine is evidence of Richard’s cruelty. Richard knew others would view Vanessa as drunk, unstable, and therefore unreliable. However, in anticipating this and using this plan against him, Vanessa painfully purchases her freedom. When Richard doesn’t send jewelry the next day, Vanessa knows her plan was successful because he is no longer trying to make up for a “misunderstanding.” This chapter demonstrates Vanessa’s strength and growth as a character; though she is not entirely innocent—she mistakenly sacrifices another—she decides to fight her oppressor despite the terrible consequences she might suffer.

Vanessa’s realization of Richard’s hand in their inability to conceive, told as a recollection in Chapter 35, marks the very beginning of her discovering who Richard really is. Once she realizes Richard lied about his sperm, Vanessa realizes that he must have been deceitful about other things. The journal is a significant tool for her in the process of attaining her freedom and represents the foggy reality Richard has intentionally created for her.