The Hunting Wives

Sophie O’Neill thinks back to a memory of glimpsing an unnamed woman floating in a pool. She conflates this memory with a vision of the same woman lying dead from a shotgun blast. Sophie notes that only a week elapsed between when she met the woman and the woman’s violent death.

Sophie meets her friend Erin for happy hour at a local wine bar. Earlier that day, a woman named Margot Banks accepted Sophie’s friend request on Facebook. Based on Margot’s photos, Sophie deduced that Margot regularly attends happy hour at this bar, so she arranged the meeting with Erin in the hopes of running into Margot. However, Margot never shows up at the bar.

Sophie and her husband, Graham, attend a party at the home of Margot and her husband. The Bankses are very wealthy and live in a beautiful and lavish house. Erin and her husband are also at the party, and Sophie meets several of Margot’s friends: Callie, Jill, and Tina. Sophie explains that she and Graham have only recently moved to the town of Mapleton, Texas; they previously lived in Chicago, Illinois. Sophie briefly lived in Mapleton when she was a teenager.