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Tess reads the letter she wrote to herself, still shaking from waking up next to a stranger. She’s shocked by the scar on her scalp and by the fact that the wedding photo in her and Graham’s bedroom is “smashed to pieces” yet still on display (127). Tess doesn’t want to be near him. Walking into the bathroom, she sees the writing on her thigh: “Graham is drugging you” (128). She doesn’t know what to believe, especially when she realizes that she’s locked in the house.
Graham gives Tess her phone, and she meets Ziggy, instantly falling in love with the dog. She suspects that his name is a secret message she sent herself, but she’s not sure what it means. When Graham serves her a burned breakfast of bacon and eggs, she swaps their plates when he’s not looking. When he steps into the living room, she quickly dials 911, saying her husband is holding her hostage. When Graham returns to the table, Tess asks how they met; he says he saved her life, giving her the Heimlich maneuver in a restaurant. When he pours her a glass of pomegranate juice, she’s instantly disgusted, though he says she drank two glasses yesterday. He asks if she’s all right, apparently concerned, and suggests a trip to the doctor, an idea Tess rejects. Then, the police arrive.
Tess thinks Graham is about to be led away in handcuffs, but he doesn’t seem remotely concerned. When he sees that it’s the police, he’s angry that Tess called 911 again. She protests, explaining to the officer that she’s locked in against her will, but Graham explains to her that she has memory problems and a tendency to wander. The officer, who knows him, backs up his statements and says Graham is Tess’s legal guardian. Tess begins to doubt herself, wondering if she’s “crazy.”
Tess convinces herself that she was wrong about Graham and settles in for The Price Is Right. She used to love watching with Harry, who was inexplicably good at guessing prices. When the contestants bid on an air fryer, Tess’s phone buzzes, and a new text displays a dollar amount. When she asks who it is, the sender specifies that this is the price of the air fryer. The host announces the real price, just $3 more than the sender guessed, and it occurs to Tess that the texter is Harry. The texter tells her to meet him at the dog park later that morning and instructs her to delete the messages.
Camila and Tess leave for the dog park, and Tess realizes that Camila knows her well. She asks what Camila thinks of Graham, and Camila assures her that he’s “nice” and won’t expect her to sleep with him. When they reach the park, Camila says she’ll sit outside the fenced area and read while Tess takes Ziggy in. A man with a beard and baseball cap sits next to her, and she realizes that it’s Harry.
Harry looks different, but he smells the same. He still loves her. He says she tracked him down a month ago, told him her suspicions about Graham, and asked Harry to help her. However, it’s hard for them to meet because Tess is never alone, and some days she doesn’t believe him. He says doctors told him that losing her memory every night isn’t an expected side effect of an accident, but is more consistent with the effect of a drug. Harry explains that she often tries to avoid ingesting anything Graham gives her, but it’s always the same the next day.
Tess asks if she and Harry could run away, but he says he’d be charged with kidnapping because Graham is her guardian. He knows about the locked drawer in Graham’s desk and says she suggested that this must be where he’s keeping whatever he drugs her with. She asks about Lucy, and Harry’s lips curl in disgust. She remembers how he once said that Lucy is “toxic” and always takes an opportunity to put Tess down. He advises her not to talk to Lucy about anything, since she can’t be trusted.
Tess asks why they broke up, and Harry says it was because Tess “believed a bunch of lies” about him and Graham was waiting to “swoop in” (159). He says Graham wanted her and her company, and he worked for My Home Spa as an accountant first. He instructs her not to take anything Graham gives her and to find the key to his desk, and he writes his number on her arm. Just then, Tess sees Camila staring at her.
Back at home, neither Camila nor Tess mentions the dog park. Camila asks if Tess wants to watch anything, and Tess asks if there’s anything Camila likes to watch. Camila talks about going to her grandmother’s house as a child to watch telenovelas. She says she went every day until, one day, her mother said her grandmother wasn’t feeling well and Camila couldn’t go anymore. Two months later, Camila learned that her grandmother had died.
Tess is surprised that her father hasn’t returned her call, and she texts Harry that she misses him. She goes to Graham’s desk and notes the photo of the two of them there, and she again wonders if she’s wrong about Graham. While she’s looking for a key, Lucy calls.
Tess confesses to Lucy that she feels stuck in a nightmare, but Lucy says these feelings have only plagued Tess for the last month or so. Before that, she was usually calmer. Tess asks why she broke up with Harry, and Lucy says that Tess caught them kissing just as Lucy was shoving him away. Tess doesn’t think Lucy would lie to her, and she begins to doubt Harry’s story. Lucy promises to come visit tomorrow.
Camila prepares dinner, and Graham comes home. However, his pleasantries strike Tess as fake. When he asks if Camila will join them for dinner, Camila demurs, and Tess notes that her fingernails are bitten painfully short. She believes that Camila and Graham may be sleeping together.
When Graham enters with drinks, Ziggy snarls at him and bites his leg. Graham yells in anger and says that Ziggy must live in the backyard now. When Graham goes upstairs to change his pants, Tess sees white particles floating in her water glass, so she dumps it into a nearby plant. Graham returns, asking what she’s doing, and she claims she chugged the water because she was so thirsty. He accuses her of lying, and she feels immediately fearful of him.
Graham saw Tess pour her water into the plant, and she says she saw something floating in it. He asks if someone told her that he’s putting something in her water. The sleeve of her sweater moves, and he spots a few of the digits Harry wrote there. He starts yelling and takes her phone, swearing that she’ll never get it back.
Later, Graham says that Harry doesn’t know what’s going on and that it was her seizure medication in the water. Recently, she has been accusing him of drugging her and refusing to take her pills, so he started putting them in water. He shows her the pill bottle, and she believes him. She agrees to take the pills.
McFadden uses dramatic irony to develop Graham’s character in ways that Tess isn’t necessarily aware of. Tess doesn’t realize that Graham serves her the same breakfast of burned eggs and bacon every morning. Readers, however, see that he prepares this breakfast every day, which means he should know how to cook it without ruining it. It’s likely, then, that he burns it on purpose to compel Tess to eat something she finds distasteful and unpleasant.
In addition, Graham serves Tess a huge glass of pomegranate juice each morning, insisting that she loves it, though it consistently disgusts her. He even lies, saying, “Yesterday you had a second glass” (136). Readers know, from “Day One” of the text, that Tess hated the pomegranate juice just as much then as she does today. Nonetheless, Graham tells her, “You love that stuff” (136), using her aversion to the juice to suggest that Tess is off today and suggesting that they visit her doctor when he knows that she hates going to the doctor; thus, serving her a ruined breakfast and loathsome juice is part of Graham’s strategy to force Tess to become more compliant, knowing she’ll avoid a doctor visit at all costs.
Finally, despite his promise that he wouldn’t lie to her about how they met, today Graham tells her that he saved her life, giving her the Heimlich maneuver and saving her life when she choked in a restaurant. Tess doesn’t realize that he burns her breakfast every morning, that she rejects the juice every morning, or that Graham routinely lies—even about things that seem relatively unimportant—but readers understand that he’s dishonest and manipulative, apparently confirming Tess’s feelings and further developing The Reliability of Intuition as a theme.
McFadden continues to use figurative language to maintain the narrative’s mood and provide clues about characters’ development. On the morning of “Day Two,” Tess reaches up to touch her scalp and says, “A jolt of electricity goes through my skull and I jerk my hand away” (128). This metaphor is as jarring as her initial comparison of the pain in her temple to that of a stabbing icepick. The idea of an electric shock to one’s head sounds painful and disorientating, corroborating the ominous mood that Part 1 established. The dramatic irony created by readers’ knowledge of Graham’s manipulation contributes to this portentous emotional environment. Tess’s confession is similar: “I discovered the padlock on the fence around the yard. This place is locked up tighter than Alcatraz” (182). This allusion to the infamous prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay conveys Tess’s sense of dread through the hyperbolic claim that her home would be even more difficult to escape from than a federal maximum-security prison surrounded by deep, cold water.
Finally, though Camila knows Tess intended to meet Harry at the dog park yesterday—something Tess herself doesn’t recall—she agrees to take Tess there. Additionally, Camila allows Tess to enter the park alone while Camila waits outside. While Tess talks to Harry, she keeps an eye on Camila, saying, “She wasn’t looking at us a minute ago, but now her gaze is directed right at me. Like a laser beam” (161). This simile conveys the intensity of Camila’s look. Tess interprets it as somewhat foreboding, but yesterday Camila was completely unwilling to entertain the idea of leaving Tess alone for even a moment. Now, she intentionally puts distance between them as if to verify Tess’s story about planning to meet Harry there. This suggests that Camila’s laser focus is less about merely surveilling Tess’s activities than about testing the accuracy of Tess’s claims (which, of course, Tess doesn’t recall making).
The novel continues to develop The Relationship Between Memory and Identity as a theme, as Tess continues to be confused about who she is and what she’s capable of, unable to remember her recent past. When the police come, for example, she says they look at her as if “[she’s] just some crazy woman who doesn’t know what’s going on. And the worst part is, [she’s] worried maybe that’s the truth” (140). Her intuition tells her something is off, and she found the message she left herself on her thigh but doesn’t remember writing it or recall writing the letter to herself that Graham her read upon waking. When she can’t align her memories with any of the stories she’s being told—either about herself or by herself—she doesn’t know what to believe about herself and her life. She suggests, “Maybe the message I left myself was wrong. Maybe I was just confused when I wrote it” (141). Without memory, Tess has no stable or reliable identity.



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