48 pages • 1-hour read
The Business Trip
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Part 1-Part 2, Chapter 13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Jasmine: The Day of the Flight”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes a discussion of death, rape, child abuse, physical abuse, and substance use.
In Madison, Wisconsin, bartender Jasmine Veronica Littleton prepares to leave her abusive boyfriend, Glenn. Three days after a violent fight in which he hit and raped her, Jasmine crushes Ambien into Glenn’s beer and sneaks out of the house while he is sleeping. For months, she has been secretly saving money from work and stealing from Glenn’s wallet in order to pay for a flight to Denver, Colorado, in cash. At the airport, she puts on a disguise and prays that she makes it to Denver before Glenn notices she is gone and tries to find her.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Stephanie: The Night Before the Flight”
Stephanie Monroe, a divorced news director for a Madison television station, prepares to fly from Denver to San Diego, California, for a news conference. She resents that the station boss always chooses her for out-of-town events because her son, Evan, is grown and she lives alone. Despite this, she resolves to have a good time in San Diego, including meeting up with a new friend, Diana, who she believes will help her have a good time. She leaves cat care instructions for her neighbor and friend Robert before taking an Ambien and falling asleep.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Jasmine: The Day of the Flight”
While waiting for her flight, Jasmine receives a text from Glenn demanding to know where she is. She claims to be out shopping but worries that Glenn will see through her lies and try to find her. As she reflects on their tumultuous relationship, Jasmine wonders whether she is strong and smart enough to survive on her own without him. She regrets lying to her friend Anna about her plans to leave, especially after Anna loaned her $500. However, she knows that Anna’s ignorance will keep them both safe from Glenn.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Stephanie: The Day of the Flight”
From the moment Stephanie wakes up, she is inundated with texts and emails from her coworkers at the news station. She spends three hours at the office fielding questions from young staffers and her boss. When the receptionist calls her trip to San Diego “fancy,” she determines to make the trip more exciting than her other recent business trips.
As she arrives at the airport, she receives a text from her only remaining family member, her sister, Renee. She boards the plane, hoping for an uneventful flight.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Anna: The Day After the Flight”
Anna wakes to three angry voicemails from Glenn, demanding to know where Jasmine is. Anna truly doesn’t know where Jasmine has gone. As Jasmine’s best friend since childhood, Anna feels guilty that she didn’t warn Jasmine about Glenn’s abusive reputation when they first started dating. She knows that Jasmine has had a rough life and wishes that she could do more to help. Anna texts Glenn, insisting that she doesn’t know where Jasmine is, and then texts Jasmine asking if she’s okay. She receives no response.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Glenn: The Day After the Flight”
On the day of the flight, Glenn arrives home and immediately realizes that Jasmine has lied to him about her whereabouts. In his first voicemail, he apologizes for hurting her and promises to change. As he drinks and smokes marijuana, his voicemails get more aggressive and threatening. Glenn feels confident that Anna is lying about knowing where Jasmine is and becomes infuriated at the idea of the women laughing at having tricked him. He holds his shotgun and pistol and imagines shooting the women for making him feel foolish.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Robert: Two Days After the Flight”
Stephanie’s neighbor Robert comes over to feed her cat, Freddie, and water her plants. He texts her a picture of Freddie and is shocked to receive a response asking him to continue to check in with Freddie for the next week since she met someone at the conference and plans to travel with him. Robert texts and calls, begging for more information, but receives nothing.
Later that afternoon, Stephanie texts that the name of the man she met is Trent McCarthy and that she is flying to Atlanta, Georgia, to stay at his home. Robert is shocked but agrees to watch Freddie.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Anna: Two Days After the Flight”
When Anna arrives at work, Glenn is waiting for her. He demands to know when she last spoke to Jasmine. Anna insists that she doesn’t know where Jasmine is and warns Glenn to leave her alone. While changing in the bar bathroom, Anna finally receives a text from Jasmine, who says that she met a man named Trent McCarthy who makes her feel safe and beautiful. Anna deletes the text. When she exits the bathroom, Glenn is sitting at the bar, pointing an imaginary gun at her. The next morning, she sees him sitting in his car outside her house.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Robert: The Weekend After the Flight”
Robert spends the weekend texting Stephanie, desperate for more information about her whirlwind romance with the mysterious Trent. Stephanie’s responses are vague and infrequent, implying that they are spending the weekend in bed. On Monday, she sends Robert a Zillow link to Trent’s condo and photos of his workplace. She also sends a photo of herself, though her face is not visible. She doesn’t answer his calls, and Robert is relieved when Stephanie sends a voice note promising that they’ll talk soon. He determines to get back to work and stop obsessing over Stephanie’s trip.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “Glenn: The Weekend After the Flight”
Glenn grows increasingly paranoid, convinced that the other bar patrons are laughing about the fact that Jasmine left him. He spends Saturday shooting at cans behind his trailer, imagining hunting down Jasmine. On Sunday, he raids Jasmine’s photo album to find pictures of Anna and Jasmine to tape to the cans. He also finds a letter to Jasmine from her friend Raven, promising to help her escape Glenn if needed. Furious, Glenn sends Anna a photo of himself shooting at photos of Jasmine, Anna, and Raven.
Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary: “Anna: The Monday After the Flight”
Glenn’s threatening texts make Anna feel so unsafe that she asks her coworkers to walk her to and from her car each day. She decides to call her childhood friend Raven, whom she considers one of the toughest people she knows, for help. When she tells Raven about Jasmine’s disappearance, Raven reveals that Jasmine complained about Glenn months ago and promises to take care of it. Anna gives Raven Glenn’s address and then texts Jasmine to tell her that Raven is now involved. Jasmine quickly responds that Raven is also helping her with a problem, shocking Anna.
Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary: “Bruce: The Monday After the Flight”
Stephanie’s assistant news director, Bruce, is looking forward to her return since he is in charge of the news in her absence. He grows concerned when she doesn’t arrive for the standard news meeting and sends several texts and voicemails. Hours later, Bruce receives a response saying that urgent business has called her to Atlanta for a week and insisting that he run the station without her. Reluctantly, Bruce informs the station manager, Dave, of Stephanie’s absence. Dave urges Bruce not to let news of Stephanie’s absence spread, but several junior staffers already know.
Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary: “Dave: The Monday After the Flight”
Dave is furious when the day ends without further contact from Stephanie, who has always been a trusted employee. He worries about Bruce’s ability to run the newsroom in her absence and having to hire another news director if she leaves for good. When he calls for advice, Dave’s wife, Lisa, suggests that he reach out to Stephanie’s son, Evan, but Dave doesn’t want to worry him unnecessarily. Instead, he decides to call Stephanie’s other emergency contact: her neighbor Robert, whom Dave met once at a party at Stephanie’s house.
Part 1-Part 2, Chapter 13 Analysis
The novel builds suspense by moving through the perspectives of different characters and revealing information slowly. The first section of the novel contains four chapters told from the perspectives of the main characters—Jasmine and Stephanie—on the day they board the same flight from Madison to Denver. The second section of the novel follows the perspectives of the people they leave behind, revealing the aftermath of their absence for their friends and coworkers.
In these chapters, the reader is denied direct access to Jasmine’s and Stephanie’s thoughts and actions. Instead, they have to rely on texts and voice notes received by others. This structure heightens tension by suggesting that Jasmine and Stephanie are in danger. Because we are not privy to the women’s thoughts, we don’t learn vital information at this time: Stephanie hires a lookalike to get out of going to the conference, and Jasmine kills that woman, thinking she is Stephanie. This information will be presented later as dramatic revelations.
The opening chapters examine The Problem With Male Anger. They suggest that men of all types can be spurred to violence. Jasmine’s abusive boyfriend personifies his anger by endowing it with sentient qualities, imagining it as a devil entirely outside of his control. This relieves him from responsibility. He claims that, although he tried to be a good boyfriend, Jasmine “always pissed [him] off with something she did or said, and that little devil in [him] would come out” (51). Glenn attributes his anger to Jasmine’s behavior, which activates an angry and violent force inside him. He repeatedly personifies his rage, describing it as a “devil [with] a pitchfork in his hand and flames behind him […] taunting [him] to do something” (68). Later, he describes “feeling the devil start a bonfire in [his] chest […] throwing wood on as fast as he could” (69). This underscores the potency of Glenn’s anger and how it ignites a physical, sensory effect. It also emphasizes how Glenn feels that his rage is a force both inside and beyond himself.
Glenn is, in some ways, a red herring, or a misleading clue. While he fantasizes about killing Jasmine and Anna, Jasmine, not Glenn, will turn out to be the killer in the story. That said, Garcia uses Glenn to explore the impact of abuse. When Jasmine kills a woman whom she believes to be Stephanie later in the novel, she replays the abuse she experienced at his hands, as well as abuse from others. In this way, Garcia implies that misogyny and rage can have significant consequences and beget more violence.
These initial chapters introduce how abuse can have lasting and traumatic effects. In Chapter 1, Jasmine details the extensive abuse she faced at the hands of her mother and Glenn. Growing up, Jasmine felt like a burden on her mother: “[E]verything I did or wanted seemed like a bother, even basic needs such as food” (9). As a result, she is forced to “harden [her] heart” as an adult (10), isolating herself from the rest of her family and most of her friends. Isolation has had devastating effects for Jasmine; it led her to rely entirely on Glenn, continuing the cycle of abuse.
The narrative emphasizes how abuse led to Jasmine having low self-esteem. She worries that she is “the stupid one of [her] mom’s three kids, the dumb waitress who need[s] a man to support her, a chick in her forties who ha[s] never really done anything in her life” (33). This passage reflects the lasting effect of her mother’s abuse, which makes her feel worthless. Although Jasmine spent months saving money and planning to escape Glenn, she nevertheless expresses “seeds of doubt” that she can live on her own without him (33).
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