Ours Is a Tale of Murder

The prologue warns that the story ahead, despite appearances, is not about love but about murder, and that something at its center was "always, actually very, very wrong" (xv).

Part I interweaves three storylines. In the first, Klara Martin, a personal injury attorney in Rockville, Maryland, attends a bar association networking event where a man stares at her from across the room. When he approaches, Klara refuses to shake his hand, acting on a protective instinct she cannot explain. The man is Troy Weston, a commercial lawyer who, as his own chapters reveal, identified Klara at a previous event, tracked her through the RSVP list, and followed her to her office. Troy has decided Klara is the woman with whom he will build the stable family he never had.

After their awkward first meeting, Troy visits Klara's office with a replacement blouse and a handwritten note asking her on a date. Lonely after a breakup with her ex-boyfriend Adam, who left because she did not want children, Klara accepts. Their relationship accelerates: Troy says he loves her after two weeks, and she reciprocates despite not meaning it. He begins shopping for an engagement ring.

Troy's controlling behaviors surface gradually. Klara's umbrella disappears before a courthouse hearing, and Troy appears afterward with one that looks identical, suggesting he took it to manufacture a rescue. His chapters reveal he memorized her coffee order months before they met by following her to a café and sometimes drives past her condo at night to confirm she is home.

When Klara discovers she is pregnant despite taking birth control pills religiously, she is stunned. After learning the same day that she was passed over for partner at her firm, she calls Troy in tears. He produces a ring he has been carrying for months. Klara accepts despite an internal voice screaming no. They elope and honeymoon in Grand Cayman. On the drive home, Troy reveals he purchased and furnished a house in Hawthorne Heights without her knowledge. Klara is devastated: The house is 45 minutes from her office, and she had no say in the decision. Troy tells her she does not need to work.

Klara gives notice at her firm, and her days grow aimless. Troy blocks her best friend Zoe's number on her phone and routes Zoe's emails to spam. When Zoe arrives in person after a week of silence, Klara admits for the first time that something is wrong with her husband. At 12 weeks, Klara miscarries. Troy deliberately ignores her calls, and she manages the miscarriage alone. On his unlocked laptop, she discovers his search history: He researched her name before they met, looked up medications that interfere with birth control, and searched for how to buy antibiotics without a prescription. Klara realizes Troy sabotaged her birth control by lacing the coffees he brought her with antibiotics. Pink baby clothes confirm he accessed her medical records to learn the baby's sex without her consent. Concluding that leaving would only begin an unending legal battle, Klara cooks dinner with two sauces: one containing peanut butter and sesame oil, to which Troy is severely allergic, and one without. She ensures he consumes the allergens, hides his EpiPens, and watches him die.

Running parallel are two other threads. In one, 28-year-old Henry Lawson watches the couple across the street from his parents' house in Hawthorne Heights. Fired from his IT job after a colleague reported him for harassment, Henry has moved into his parents' basement. His chapters reveal a long history of stalking women stretching back to middle school. Henry fixates on the wife, whom he perceives as in need of rescue. He breaks into her house and searches the rooms. He also enters neighbor Mary Irvin's house to steal a knife from her kitchen.

In the other thread, Mary, an older woman, packs up the preserved bedroom of her son Owen because she must sell the house. Flashbacks reveal her late husband, Ed, was emotionally abusive. She hears someone in the basement and later prepares meals for a person living below who refuses to speak to her.

Part II reveals a metafictional twist. Kate Harvey snaps her laptop closed in frustration: Klara and Troy are fictional characters in a manuscript she has been writing. Kate lives in Hawthorne Heights with her husband, Ben. She quit her career as a financial analyst to reduce stress and improve her fertility, but 14 months of trying to conceive have strained their marriage. Ben reads her manuscript while she sleeps, and they argue about her obsession with getting pregnant. They reconcile, though nothing is truly resolved.

That night, while Kate works late, Ben sits on their back patio. When she goes to find him, she discovers he has been stabbed to death. Detectives Nia Scott and Frank Perkins treat Kate as a suspect. They interview the Lawson family: Henry claims he barely knew the Harveys, and his mother, Janet, corroborates his alibi. At Mary's house, the detectives learn that Owen, now 33, was convicted of stabbing his father to death at 15, was paroled after 15 years, and lives in her basement. He has not spoken since his release and refuses to be interviewed.

Henry enters Kate's unlocked house uninvited and, when ordered to leave, blurts out that the murderer lives next door to him, referring to Owen and revealing knowledge he should not possess. Enraged by Kate's rejection, Henry emails her stolen manuscript to the detectives, framing her with a novel about a wife who murders her husband. Kate denies sending it, reports Henry's stalking, and asserts her right to an attorney.

Mary discovers a knife missing from her block and connects it to the stabbing. She donates the entire block to Goodwill and buys a replacement. Owen breaks his silence, telling Mary that the night before the murder, he saw a bearded man take a knife from her kitchen and leave toward Henry's house. Owen does not want to involve the police, and Mary respects his decision. Kate's close friend from college, Maya, a lawyer, arrives and insists Kate stop speaking to police without counsel. They research Henry and find evidence of misconduct at his prior job.

Janet Lawson carries her own secret: On the night of the murder, she finds Henry's blood-soaked clothes in the washing machine, cuts a piece of fabric from his shirt, and seals it in a bag. She goes to the police station and gives the fabric to Detective Scott, identifying it as evidence from the night her son killed their neighbor.

The epilogue follows the characters forward. Mary and Owen move into a small apartment; Owen's art lines the walls, and he speaks to his mother again. Mary has reconnected with Greg Behler, a teacher she once had feelings for. Kate takes a new job and begins rewriting her manuscript, dedicating it to Ben. She acknowledges he was right: She had lost herself in the obsession with conceiving. Her period arrives five days after his death, confirming she was not pregnant. Janet returns home and finds a tin of muffins on her porch with no note. She bites into one before realizing the muffins contain peanut butter, an allergen that could kill Henry. The sender is never identified, and the novel closes on this unresolved question.