My Lovely Wife

The narrator returns home to his wife, Millicent, and his kids, Rory, 14, and Jenna, 13. He informs Millicent that Petra is not “right” for them. He means she is not the right person for them to murder, though he does not say this outright. He does not tell Millicent that he slept with Petra. He is not an accountant; he teaches private tennis lessons at a country club. The family eats breakfast together like they do every morning.

The narrator recounts meeting Millicent: he was 22, traveling home from a trip to Cambodia with some friends. Walking through the airport, he spotted Millicent and was captivated by the way she looked out the window as if she had a dream. The narrator had no real dream besides traveling, which he had just fulfilled, so he was interested in sharing Millicent’s dream instead. He did not approach her in the airport, but they ended up on the same flight, and he bribed the flight attendant to seat him next to Millicent. The reason she was staring out the window in a dreamlike manner was actually because this was her first time flying.

Since Petra has been eliminated as a murder victim, the next option is a woman named Naomi. The narrator goes to the Lancaster Hotel, where she works at the front desk. She is 27, single, and has few close friends. It seems like she sometimes sleeps with hotel guests. The narrator has been spying on her for a while.

The previous night, Millicent asked why Petra was a bad option, pointing out that this is the second woman the narrator has eliminated. He emphasizes the importance of choosing the right person. Millicent is sick of waiting, which is why the narrator is once again spying on Naomi, hoping to learn whether she is “right.” While waiting for Naomi’s shift to be over, the narrator watches TV in a bar and is surprised to see the face of a woman named Lindsay on the news. She has been missing for over a year and has not been in the news much recently, but now there is a new development.

Before Lindsay went missing, the narrator encountered her while hiking, and pretended to be a deaf man named Tobias. The narrator also has a separate cell phone that he uses to communicate as Tobias, and he gave this number to Lindsay after chatting with her. Later, Millicent and the narrator kidnapped Lindsay together to kill her, but the narrator had to leave to take care of Jenna, so Millicent said she would deal with Lindsay alone. Now, nearly a year later, Lindsay’s body has been found. The narrator goes home, panicking, but Millicent says everything is okay. The narrator tells Millicent that, now that Lindsay is in the news again, they should wait before killing the next person.

When the narrator first met Millicent on the plane, she was not interested in him. He joked that he could protect her from other men by giving them paper cuts with an airplane emergency information card. This became an inside joke, with the narrator gifting an emergency card to Millicent for Christmas and her keeping it forever. Years later, Rory got a bad papercut, and Millicent recalled when her sister, Holly, gave her a bad one too. Millicent rarely talks about Holly.

Lindsay is the only person the narrator and Millicent have murdered whose body has been discovered, so the narrator is panicking. He is also surprised at where the body was found. He and Millicent had drugged Lindsay and taken her to a swamp, where they planned to kill and bury her while their kids were at sleepovers. However, upon arriving at the swamp, they received a call saying Jenna was very sick and needed to be picked up. The narrator went to pick Jenna up, leaving Millicent to finish the murder and burial alone. However, Lindsay’s body was found in an abandoned motel, not the swamp. Her fingerprints had been filed off, but police identified her through dental records. Millicent does not seem surprised or worried that the police have found Lindsay.

That evening, the narrator and Millicent go out to dinner with Andy, the friend the narrator traveled to Cambodia with, and his wife Trista, who takes tennis lessons with him. All of them live in a gated community, Hidden Oaks, but Andy and Trista are wealthier than the narrator and Millicent. Andy and Trista drink wine, but Millicent disapproves of alcohol, so the narrator refrains when he is around her. On the way home, the narrator drives by the hotel to make sure Naomi is still alive.

The narrator and Millicent, who is a real estate agent, alternate working on Saturdays. Whoever does not work takes the kids to sports events. Today, the narrator attends Jenna’s soccer game. He does not understand soccer but tries to be encouraging, which may embarrass her but is still better than not being encouraging. The narrator checks his phone; the news says Lindsay died only a few weeks ago. This means Millicent kept Lindsay alive somewhere, unbeknownst to the narrator, for nearly a year. After soccer, the narrator takes his kids to get pizza and frozen yogurt. He drops the kids at home, then goes to the open house Millicent is working at to confront her.

The narrator recalls how Millicent became pregnant a few months after they got married. He was worried about money and parenting, but Millicent said they would be fine. This made him feel strong enough to become a parent.

The narrator asks Millicent what she did to Lindsay over a year, but Millicent cannot talk now because she is working. The narrator drives around, restless, and finally goes home. Later, the family has dinner together, as they do every night, but the narrator is still distracted thinking about Millicent and Lindsay.

The narrator grew up in Hidden Oaks, attended nice schools, and had everything he needed, but his parents were cold and distant toward him, so he could not wait to leave. He returned from Cambodia after his parents died in a car accident. After losing his parents, he was grateful to Millicent for building and structuring a new family for him. She has a lot of rules, such as meals together, weekly movie nights, mostly organic food, limited sugar, chores, limited time on electronic devices, and homework done before TV. The narrator struggles to reconcile the positive aspects of Millicent with the fact that she secretly kept Lindsay alive, presumably to torture her, for a year.

The narrator recalls how once when the kids were babies, he came home drunk, and Millicent took the kids and disappeared for a week. When they returned, she said she would not come back a second time. Now, he is afraid of upsetting her. However, he still cheats on her with Petra and others.

Rory gets suspended for cheating on a test at school. Millicent bans him from TV, video games, phone, and the Internet. Privately, Rory tells the narrator that he has seen him sneaking out at night. He also found Petra’s earrings and knows the narrator is cheating on his mother. He wants a new video game in exchange for not telling his mother and sister about the narrator’s infidelity. The narrator agrees.

The narrator recalls three years prior, when Millicent’s father had already died, and her mother was dealing with Alzheimer’s. Years before that, Millicent claimed that her sister Holly died in a car crash at age 15, but that before she died, she often tried to hurt Millicent and lied to their parents about it, leaving Millicent in constant fear. Millicent also claimed to be allergic to eye drops.

The narrator gives Rory his new video game, instructing him not to let his mom see him playing it. The narrator watches the news, where a reporter named Josh covers Lindsay’s story. The news says the killer used a chain to strangle Lindsay. The narrator teaches tennis to a retired, extra-wealthy, gossipy neighborhood woman named Kekona. She brings up Lindsay, which means Lindsay must be a big deal because normally Kekona only wants to gossip about people who live in Hidden Oaks. That evening, Millicent and the narrator have a “date night” in the garage so the kids will not overhear them.

Millicent assures the narrator that, although Lindsay was found, no evidence will point to them as the killers. They originally found Lindsay on the Internet, then stalked her in real life to make sure she was “right.” Millicent wants to mimic a serial killer named Owen Oliver Riley, who killed many women in their community years ago. He was briefly imprisoned but was released because the police collected his DNA before getting their warrant signed. Owen disappeared, but Millicent wants to make it look like he is back so they can frame him for the murders of Lindsay and anyone else they kill. It is around the anniversary of when Owen was released from prison, which is why Millicent wanted the police to find Lindsay now. Millicent strangled Lindsay and filed her fingerprints off because Owen did these things too. The narrator asks why she did not tell him; she claims she wanted it to be a surprise to celebrate their anniversary of choosing Lindsay.

The narrator returns to Holly’s backstory. She did not die in a car crash at age 15. She was committed to a psychiatric facility at that age, where she remained until three years earlier when Millicent’s mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s and could not always remember who her daughters were. Millicent got a call notifying her of Holly’s release, then told the narrator that Holly was committed due to her constant attempts to harm or even kill Millicent. Holly fooled their parents for a while but they eventually caught on, and Holly was sent away. Holly was finally released after 23 years in the facility and ended up being the first person the narrator and Millicent killed.

In the present, the narrator researches Owen so he and Millicent can better imitate him. Owen targeted women in their twenties and thirties who were physically small—under 5’3”—and who lived alone and had few social connections. Owen worked in the billing office of a hospital, where all his victims had been patients. Owen’s victims did not wear much makeup or fashionable clothing, nor did they use nail polish. The narrator looks forward to framing Owen for more murders with Millicent.