Pictures of You

Drew is overwhelmed with emotion when Evie kisses him, a kiss of “brand-new passion colliding with recognition” (302). It’s a kiss without Oliver’s shadow over her life, and Drew fears he is falling even harder than he did the first time.

Evie is convinced that, despite what Drew said, their past kiss meant something. She thinks whatever was between them in the past must have been special, and the connection between them now is about their future: “It’s as if the loss of the last thirteen years doesn’t matter at all, and we could just start right here, on this deck at sunrise” (305).

Bree, joining them on the deck, shows Evie a picture of Ivy, her partner. Bree lets slip that Drew is Oliver’s brother. Drew explains finding the picture and how he traumatized his mother by showing it to her the night of the formal. Evie asks what else they haven’t told her, and Drew decides to tell her about Harriet.

Evie is at her house on a Saturday morning. Oliver is sleeping in, having worked late. She is unhappy with Oliver and wonders when he is going to leave her. She recalls leaving for Drew’s mother’s funeral and getting a call from Oliver, who was at the cliffs at The Gap. He threatened to jump unless Evie took him back. He made her send a text to Drew asking him to pretend Drew and Evie had never met. Evie now feels that she can’t walk away “and have his inevitable choice on [her] conscience” (313). So she chooses Oliver, again, and feels she keeps losing parts of herself as a consequence.

A young, blonde woman knocks on the door and introduces herself as Chloe. She has a three-year-old daughter, and Evie recognizes the resemblance to Oliver. Chloe says that Oliver told her that he and Evie had broken up. Oliver asks what is wrong with the child.

Drew agrees to meet Evie and Oliver, though he thinks, “I hate myself for the way I react to her, every single time” (317). Oliver announces that he has a daughter who needs a bone marrow transplant. They are testing family members for an antigen, and when no one else matched, Anderson told Oliver about Drew. Drew says he will get tested but tells Oliver he’s not going to pretend that their family is a happy one. He thought he had no one left, and now he has a niece.

Evie feels like the kiss with Drew was a glimpse into her future. Bree admits she was always “Team Drew” (322). Evie finds the DVD of her wedding video and watches it. She wonders why Bree was not part of the ceremony. Evie, seeing how good-looking Oliver was, remembers her feelings of inferiority, of not deserving him, and how Oliver told her, “Nobody else will ever love you like me” (323). Evie can see from her expression that she didn’t want to go through with this wedding. She fast-forwards and gets to the speeches.

Drew, also watching the wedding video, realizes that Evie looks empty and miserable. At the speeches, Anderson gushes about his “blond-haired, young, clever boy” (326). Evie is upset by this and recalls another, similarly odd phrase, though she can’t remember where it came from: “my brown-eyed, creative, tall boy” (327). When she repeats the phrase to Drew, he knows where she read it.

Evie explains that there is a particular order for adjectives in the English language. She’s excited that her linguistics knowledge is still there. Drew shows her the email with that phrase she said to him.

Evie admits it’s likely that the same person who made the wedding speech wrote Annie’s suicide note. She thinks, “Murder is for Agatha Christie. It’s for CSI Miami. It’s for How to Host a Murder parties. It’s a group of crows. Murder is not something that happens in our own family” (332). She remembers her notepad with the note on adjective order and wonders if she had made this discovery earlier.

When Drew mentions that Anderson is an anesthesiologist, Evie suggests he could have tampered in some way with Annie’s medications. Evie says she will come with Drew to report this to the police. Even though she’s abandoned him so many times, Drew feels cautiously hopeful that Evie is here for him now.

At the end of the DVD, raw footage captures the moment before the ceremony when Evie’s Dad suggests they could call the whole thing off. Evie insists they should stand by her. Bree says she can’t watch Evie make this mistake, and leaves.

Evie talks to her parents. She sees how Oliver looked at her in the wedding video—“like it was just me, and nobody else was in the room” (340). She realizes that being with Oliver must have felt at first like one of her 18th-century love stories, like a superstar crashing into her life. She wonders why she stayed with him if he was cruel to her, and her dad suspects Evie was trying to keep Oliver alive. Evie would have been too proud to admit to others that she had been wrong about Oliver.

Evie answers the door and finds a woman holding the hand of the little girl from her phone camera roll. The woman hugs Drew, and Evie is wildly jealous. This must be Chloe. Evie assumes Harriet is his child and feels torn to pieces until Bree tells her the child is Oliver’s.

Evie’s parents welcome Chloe in. Harriet shows Evie a picture she drew of their family with Oliver wearing angel wings. Evie feels drawn to Harriet and talks gently with her about her father’s death, reminding her that she is still surrounded by people who love her. Harriet credits Uncle Drew with saving her life. Later, as they take a walk, Evie wonders if other lives have this much drama. Drew explains that he turned out to be a match and so donated bone marrow to help Harriet battle her leukemia. Oliver was jealous, and, in consequence, Evie stopped letting her parents or Drew see Harriet.

Drew tells Evie that Oliver was so jealous of the attention Harriet got that he pulled her away from everyone, including Evie’s own parents, but it was Evie’s last email that finally broke her parents.

Evie asks to see the email where she broke up with her parents and realizes at once she didn’t write it. There is a period after her name, and Evie never signs her name like that. She wonders why she didn’t just leave Oliver, and Drew says it’s not easy leaving an abusive relationship. Oliver tracked her. If her friends or family expressed concern, he drew Evie away. She was afraid of him, yet made every excuse for him. Drew admits he was enraged by the hold Oliver had over her. Evie thinks Drew is “giving serious Darcy-saving-the-Bennets-from-ruin energy” (357). Evie wonders how she could have become so small when she thought she was strong. She cries that she just wants her memory back so she can move on, but she fears that she doesn’t yet know the worst.

Evie’s marriage is dead, and she feels as though she too is dead. She asked Oliver to go with her to see the bioluminescence in Jervis Bay, and he didn’t even get out of the car. She feels, “My own life has evaporated” (359). She sees that a classmate from school has died at the age of 30. Reflecting on how she’s lost Bree, Drew, and her own love for life, she decides, “I can’t give another single day to this man” (361).

Drew is astonished when his exhibit, Pictures of You, is shortlisted for a prestigious award. The photos are of Evie, and he never got her permission, which he needs.

Having pulled out of her PhD program, then quit her job, Evie does little but go to the gym and the coffee shop. She gets an email from Drew about his exhibit. When she looks at his photos of her, she’s struck by “how much [her] life has shrunk. And just how far [she’s] fallen” (368). She goes outside to read his artist’s statement.

Drew reflects on his artist’s statement, which is essentially a letter to Evie. He wrote that he’s captured “the person I saw in you, and the one you imagined becoming” as well as “the woman you could be again” (371). He gets an email from Evie saying he does not have permission to use the pictures and must never contact her again. There is a period after her name.

Evie reflects on how she never really felt herself with Oliver and always worried about how he would perceive her. She felt completely at ease with herself with Drew. Oliver has tried to sculpt her into the woman he wanted and has hollowed her out in the process. She looks for Drew’s message and can find nothing from him in her inbox. Her text message fails. She realizes she should have left Oliver years ago, when he first started closing off her life. She thinks, “I shouldn’t be almost thirty and crying in a park, wishing I was sixteen again and could go back and do everything differently” (375).

Oliver arrives with Harriet, whom he took to the beach. He claims he put sunscreen on her when he didn’t, and he goes through Evie’s purse and throws away her candy bar. This is the act that solidifies Evie’s decision to leave him. Oliver insists on taking Harriet back to Chloe earlier than planned. When Evie asks why he’s tracking her, Oliver says it’s to keep her safe. He insists that he loves her, more than anyone else could, and Evie suddenly realizes that Oliver clung to her, when he could have had anyone, to keep her from being with Drew. She realizes, “It was never about loving me. It was about hating Drew. From the moment Drew reached in and pulled me out of that swimming pool away from him” (378).

Oliver acts the gentleman in public, but in private he gives Evie the silent treatment when he doesn’t get his way. He wants to go for a drive and heads toward the Illawarra escarpment and the Macquarie Pass, which winds along the edge of a ravine. Oliver demands to know whether Evie is happy and reminds her that, when they met, she adored him. Evie says it was because he helped Bree. Oliver laughs and says he was responsible for the website. He got the black eye in the brawl at the party where they got pushed into the pool. Evie snaps and says she wants a divorce.

Drew hears about the accident on the news and somehow knows it’s Evie. He goes to the hospital where Evie is unconscious and holds her hand. The nurses ask him to leave so he doesn’t excite her, since her vitals, reflected on the monitor, suggest that Evie knows Drew is there.

Drew wakes Evie up and takes her to Brighton Beach to see the bioluminescence. She pulls Drew into the water with her and kisses him. As the sun rises, Evie’s memory starts to flood back. She remembers why she quit her PhD: She got a letter, with the adjectives out of order, threatening her to pull her research funding.

Drew realizes what’s happening and decides to stay with her. Evie cries that it was all her fault.

Oliver’s last words were, “Evie, if I can’t have you…” (396). She remembers the crash, remembers looking at Oliver, dead, and wondering who he was. She tells Drew that Oliver didn’t lose control of the car; he sped up on the bend at the pass. She remembers everything with Oliver and everything she felt for Drew. Drew holds her as she weeps, “[m]ore than a decade’s worth of tears” (396), and then she recalls the trigger for everything.

Evie says it was all for him, and Drew doesn’t understand. She says the letter was from Anderson. She’d started noticing the way he talked and was doing her research on idiolects, unusual speech patterns. Anderson found out and thought Evie would expose him. He came to her office and demanded she quit the program. Remembering Annie’s note, Evie confronted him, and Anderson confessed everything.

Annie, trying to protect Drew, had threatened to file a report of a historical sexual offense, which Anderson knew would destroy his reputation. So he tampered with Annie’s drugs. If Evie told anyone, Anderson threatened to hurt the man she loved—not Oliver, but Drew. Evie realizes she promised Anderson she’d give up everyone she loved, and all her dreams, to protect Drew. Drew, who has always supported her. She explains that Oliver wrote the text demanding Drew pretend they never met. Evie realizes “it was [Drew] all along, [and] this is the truth I’d always kept from myself” (404). Evie vows to get her life back and feels full of hope for the future. She asks Drew if he will want to take pictures of her forever. She raises her phone to take a selfie of them and tells him to smile.