51 pages • 1-hour read
Happy Wife
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section includes discussion of sexual content.
Prologue Summary
Nora Somerset watches in horror as police cars approach her home. Although the cars would normally be out of place on her fancy street, they have been increasingly frequent lately. As she steps outside, she notices Detective Travis Ardell approaching her with a serious look on his face. She briefly imagines the face of her husband, Will, floating before her. Although her friend Este begs her to come inside, she waits for the police to approach.
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Night of The Party”
Several weeks earlier, Nora hides in the bathroom from the guests of a party being held at her house to celebrate her husband Will’s 46th birthday. As Will’s 28-year-old second wife, Nora feels that her only job is to make it through the party. Given the number of terrible jobs she’s had, Nora is confident she can do it.
However, the gossip and judgement of Will’s friends’ wives shakes her confidence. The women of Winter Park, Florida—an expensive, luxurious suburb of Orlando—have not accepted Nora into their circle, siding instead with Will’s first wife, Constance. Nora’s only friend is her rambunctious neighbor Este, who encourages her to try to have fun before accidentally spilling red wine on Nora’s dress.
Chapter 2 Summary
Nora’s party planner Autumn steps in to clean up the spilled wine and tells Nora to go upstairs and change. As Nora weaves through her 9,000 square-foot house, she stops in the kitchen, where her friend Marcus is working as the party’s caterer. Nora thanks Marcus for closing his restaurant to cater the party, and she apologizes for the things she said to him the last time they spoke. Marcus tells her not to worry and to enjoy the party.
When Nora becomes emotional, Marcus insists that she is better than anyone else in Winter Park, and that she doesn’t need to fight for their approval. As Nora leaves, she notices Will watching them through the kitchen door.
Chapter 3 Summary
As she rejoins the party, Nora notices Will standing on their private dock engaged in a heated conversation with his law partner, Frederick “Fritz” Hall III, a descendant of one of the oldest, wealthiest families in Winter Park. The men stop arguing when they see her, and Will walks quickly up the dock to meet Nora. He is annoyed to see that she has changed, and questions whether Este was drunk when she spilled the wine.
As they rejoin the party, Fritz begins loudly telling a story about himself that Nora has heard several times. Will interrupts Fritz to announce that dinner is ready, annoying him. Despite the fact that she is seated by Fritz’s wife Gianna, who is Constance’s best friend, Nora enjoys the party.
Chapter 4 Summary
After the last guests leave, Nora joins Will out on their large patio, where he is drinking a bourbon. Nora pushes him for compliments about the party, but he simply says that he thinks 46 will be a good year. He asks Nora if she will still love him when he is older, and she jokes that she won’t love his ear hairs. Her teasing transitions into physical intimacy, and Will suggests they go upstairs. Although Nora wants to have sex on their private patio, she doesn’t want to break the mood.
As they approach the bedroom, Will receives a call from his teenage daughter Mia, who asks him to grab a sweatshirt she left on their boat earlier that day. Will leaves, promising to be back in five minutes, but Nora falls asleep before he returns.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Day After”
Nora’s home in Winter Park is in the prestigious Isle of Sicily neighborhood, a long peninsula that stretches into Lake Maitland. Most days, Nora is awake before the kayak tours of the lakes of Winter Park pass by her house. On the day after the party, however, Nora sleeps until almost noon.
When she wakes, she notices that Will’s side of the bed is untouched. Knowing that Will’s job as a trial lawyer keeps him working long hours, she assumes that he is at the office. Although his car is in the driveway, she guesses that he took a taxi to work so that he could continue to work on the way. Este arrives to take Nora to yoga.
Chapter 6 Summary
As Nora and Este drive to yoga class, Nora tries to find Will’s location using the Find My app on her phone. Este jokes that Nora has been “work-widowed” (27), her term for when Will disappears into his work when he has a trial coming up.
After yoga, Nora calls the Ritz-Carlton hotel, where Will typically stays during these busy times. The hotel staff refuse to discuss anything about guests with her at first. When she calls back again and asks for him explicitly, she learns that he is not at the hotel. Este suggests Nora call Will’s assistant, but Nora doesn’t want Will’s law firm to know that he is so uncommunicative with her. By the time Este invites Nora over for dinner that night, her worry has turned to anger.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Thirty-Six Hours After”
On the Monday after the party, Nora is beginning to spiral about not hearing from Will. Although she knows that most women would have kicked their husband out after not hearing from them for so long, Nora feels that this is her lot as a trial lawyer’s wife.
While on a run with Este, the pair stop to inspect their neighbor Carol’s fence, which was recently ruined when a car crashed into it. Nora notices Will’s partner Fritz driving by, and begins running after the car to confront him. Fritz demands to know where Will is, and Nora realizes that her assumption was wrong: He was not at work. Fritz is shocked that Nora hasn’t reported him missing, and immediately calls his old friend Detective Travis Ardell.
Chapter 8 Summary
As Detective Ardell enters, Nora remembers watching him (consensually) slip his hand up the skirt of Tippy, a married woman, on the first night they met. A Winter Park native, Ardell is noticeably deferential to Fritz, annoying Nora.
When Nora tells Ardell that Will is missing, Ardell suggests filing a missing person’s report. Fritz interrupts, claiming that the news would soon reach reporters and that he doesn’t want publicity and gossip to taint the firm. Nora describes her last interactions with Will, and Fritz and Ardell leave to inspect the deck. Este urges Nora to join them, but Nora insists she has nothing to hide. When the men return, they decide to file a police report. As they leave, Nora notices an old grey car driving slowly by her house.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Before”
The narrative flashes back to Nora’s premarital past. Before she becomes Mrs. Somerset, Nora’s life is much less glamorous. Since her job at a children’s museum doesn’t pay much, Nora takes a second job teaching swimming lessons at a local country club.
While at the club one day, she notices two young girls sneaking alcoholic drinks off tables. Later, she finds one of the girls, a teenager named Mia, throwing up alone in the bathroom. When Nora offers to contact Mia’s parents, Mia begs her not to call her mom, whom she claims is “crazy.” Nora is surprised by the spark she feels when she meets Mia’s father, a handsome lawyer named Will. A week later, Will returns to the club to ask Nora out on a date. She accepts, but doesn’t expect much.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Two Days After”
In the present, Nora’s nerves are on edge as she waits for news about Will two days after his disappearance. She feels as if she was never meant to live in their giant home alone.
Worried that Fritz and Ardell are suspicious of her, Nora decides to take measures into her own hands. She drives to the law firm and asks Will’s secretary, Lenore, to let her into his office. Lenore agrees, assuring Nora that Will will be home soon. In Will’s office, Nora finds a notecard with a phone number on it. Fritz enters and gently asks Nora to leave, citing attorney-client privilege in Will’s paperwork. Nora leaves with the number. The call goes straight to voicemail for a man named Dean Morrison.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Before”
In a flashback, Nora saves Will’s number in her phone as Hot Mean Lawyer because she doesn’t want to get attached. Will brings her to a fancy restaurant where he is greeted by name by the staff and many customers. Desperate to get him away from his world, Nora insists that they leave and go to a small Irish pub instead. Although the date is exciting and sexually-charged, Nora worries that Will is too successful and rich to want to be with her. Nevertheless, she goes home with him, and the two share an intimate evening.
The next week, Nora notices a group of women gossiping about her at the country club. She wonders if Will is worth the gossip.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Two Days After”
In the present, Nora spends an hour at a Verizon store trying to convince the clerk to grant her access to Will’s phone records to see if he ever dialed the number she found in his office. Since she is not the account holder, but simply a user, she cannot access any information.
Nora realizes that, as the second wife, she came into Will’s life when his life was already established. She has no access to his bank accounts or any other private information. Este calls and urges Nora to meet her at workout class, insisting that the police will call her if any new information turns up. Nora reluctantly agrees, hoping Will isn’t in trouble.
Chapter 13 Summary
Nora attends a workout class with Este, but immediately regrets it when she is confronted by Tippy Schaeffer, the Winter Park housewife whom she caught being inappropriate with Detective Ardell. Tippy acts concerned about Will, but Nora realizes that she is just looking for gossip. Unprepared to handle other peoples’ opinions about Will’s disappearance, Nora leaves. Este insists that they go get Botox, and Nora agrees, feeling as if she deserves the punishment of the needles.
Afterwards, she is confronted by Will’s ex-wife Constance, who accuses her of waiting to call the police in order to hide information about Will. As Este drives her home, Nora sees the old grey car drive down their street again.
Prologue-Chapter 13 Analysis
The opening chapters of Happy Wife introduce the novel’s thematic interest in The Power of Cliques. From the beginning of the novel, Nora feels out of place among the wealthy residents of Winter Park, Florida. As the formerly working-class second wife of a prominent member of the community, Nora feels excluded by the rest of the women in town. She considers herself an “interloper” (15)—an important motif in the text—and suggests that she and Este became friends because, “we were both outsiders” (8). Nora’s feeling that she is an outsider leads her to reciprocate the fear and hatred that she receives from the community. She describes the attendees of her husband’s birthday party as “status-obsessed social snipers who hate me” (7), despite the fact that many of them are his friends. Marcus escalates this rhetoric, calling the wealthy partygoers “drunken fakes” (11), “truly vile human beings” (11), and “sociopaths” (11). The anger in Nora and Marcus’s descriptions of the other Winter Park residents reflects their belief that they are outsiders and that there is something inauthentic and even cutthroat about the social atmosphere they move within.
The authors build tension by suggesting that Nora may be responsible for her husband’s death and stressing the differences between Nora and her Winter Park neighbors. The Prologue takes place several days after Will’s disappearance, which has not yet been disclosed to the reader, as police investigate Nora for his disappearance. As Nora watches police approach her house with “enough equipment to dismantle [her] life” (3), she thinks with regret that she “should have known better [and] should have seen this coming” (3). Despite the lack of details here, the Prologue suggests that Nora expects that the police will find evidence to condemn her, and that she expected them to come after her. Nora’s attitude suggests that she may be at least partially responsible for Will’s disappearance and death, adding tension to the novel from the very beginning and creating a red herring, as Nora is not the murderer after all.
The authors also build tension by explicitly referring to violence even before the fact of Will’s disappearance is revealed. In Chapter 1, Este spills red wine on Nora’s white dress, leaving her with a “red stain bleeding across the white silk” (9, emphasis added) so that she looks “like [she’s] survived a massacre” (9, emphasis added). Although Nora is not herself the victim of violence, the reference to blood and massacres in this passage reflect the violent chaos Will’s disappearance brings to her life, and Will’s own fate. Later, Este attempts to console Nora by suggesting that Will is simply holed up in his office, leaving her “work-widowed” (27). Although Nora recognizes that Este is joking, the use of the word “widow” subtly foreshadows the ultimate revelation that Will is dead. The use of these violent terms help the authors to add suspense to the early chapters of the novel.
It is also implied that Nora may be having an affair with her friend Marcus, and therefore may be responsible for Will’s disappearance, adding a significant complicating dimension to The Complex Nature of Grief. On the night of Will’s disappearance, Nora has an awkward encounter with Marcus that is filled with “unspoken tension” (11). Although she does not clarify the source of the tension—saying only that she “treated him terribly the last time [she] saw him”—Nora’s emotional turmoil surrounding Marcus is clear. She claims that “he deserves [an apology]” and that “the regret is so heavy I can barely stand it” (11). Nora describes their relationship as “a door that keeps unlatching” (11), suggesting that she is repeatedly tempted by him in some way. Adding to the tension of this relationship is the fact that Nora grows increasingly “paranoid” that her husband “is […] watching [them]” (12). Nora’s anxieties about her relationship with Marcus and her fear that Will might discover the truth builds tension by further suggesting that Nora is not wholly innocent.
These opening chapters also introduce the novel’s interest in the differences between appearances and reality and hints at The Influence of Media on the Criminal Justice System. After Will disappears, Nora declines to report him missing to the police because she knows that he “has never been one for scenes” (33) and would most likely “be pissed if [she] drew attention to his disappearing act” (33), suggesting that Will would be wary of attracting wider public attention. Later, Will’s law partner Fritz repeats this idea, insisting that Detective Ardell consider “the optics” (38) of reporting a prominent citizen missing: “[H]ow long are we talking before this city is on its head with speculation and wild theories?” (38). The fact that both Nora and Fritz are reluctant to report Will missing reflects their wariness of inviting public scrutiny and potential scandal into their ostensibly stable, respectable lives.
Unlock all 51 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs