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Summary: Prologue–Chapter 3
Prologue
The narrator, later identified as Hannah, recalls her husband Owen’s fond teasing of her tendency to be forgetful and distracted. He particularly relishes a story about their second date, when she misplaced a parking ticket. A week after Owen goes missing, she returns in her dreams to the parking lot. There, he takes off his wedding ring, telling her that she has now lost him too.
Chapter 1: If You Answer the Door for Strangers. . .
A twelve-year-old girl knocks on Hannah’s door and asks for Mrs. Michaels. Hannah guesses the child’s age, a skill she has honed from living with her sixteen-year-old stepdaughter Bailey. Her relationship with Bailey is difficult, with complications that derive in part from mistaking Bailey as younger when they first met. The girl hands Hannah a note from Owen. It is very short—“Protect her”—but Hannah understands it immediately.
Chapter 2: Greene Street Before It Was Greene Street
The narrative shifts to the past, as Hannah recalls when she met Owen two years earlier. At that time, she lived and worked in Manhattan. A gifted woodturner, Hannah has a devoted clientele, which includes Owen’s boss, Avett. Hannah first meets Owen when Avett comes to her studio to check on a commission for his wife, Belle. Avett is on the phone throughout the meeting, but Owen is quickly drawn to one of Hannah’s handmade tables. Owen and Hannah flirt, although she quickly stresses that she is not open to dating clients. Owen shares that he has a similar policy, although he does not date because he is a single father. These policies notwithstanding, they decide to attend a play together.
Hannah returns to the present time, and Bailey is in the kitchen. In between unsuccessful attempts at reaching Owen, Hannah tries to replicate a pasta dish that Bailey had enjoyed at a restaurant. This is one of her many attempts at establishing a better relationship with Bailey, whose mother died in an unnamed tragedy. Here, as in other instances, she fails, burning the pasta. A huffy Bailey leaves for play rehearsal without Hannah ever mentioning Owen’s note.
Chapter 3: Don’t Ask a Question You Don’t Want the Answer To
Hannah goes to pick Bailey up from rehearsal and, while waiting for her, hears a news story about Owen’s employer, The Shop, which specializes in software protecting online privacy. Federal investigators have raided their offices and arrested Avett for fraud. A shaken Bailey appears, carrying a duffel bag. She says that Owen left it for her and that it contains a large sum of money—$600,000—and a cryptic note. In addition to instructing her to help Hannah, her father’s note urges Bailey to remember what is truly important in life. Overcome with stress, Hannah vomits. Sheepishly Bailey offers her some marijuana, which Hannah confiscates but does not seem to take. Bailey is now also aware of the raid on The Shop and angrily asks for explanations for her father’s behavior. Hannah tries to reassure Bailey, promising to get answers for them both. Back at the houseboat, they see Jules, Hannah’s oldest friend, who blurts out that everything is her fault.
Analysis
The Last Thing He Told Me begins abruptly, thrusting both Hannah and the novel’s readers into the action. As in many detective narratives or thrillers, the main action has already occurred and the work the characters must undertake is a kind of reconstruction of that action. As the Prologue explains that Owen has disappeared, Dave quickly establishes the novel’s stakes: Hannah must discover what has happened to her husband. This quick development of the plot is a hallmark of thrillers. It ensures that readers are immediately engaged with the story’s central narrative and want to keep reading to learn more. Dave heightens the narrative tension by juxtaposing the forward motion of the present action with Hannah’s flashbacks, which move further into her past with Owen. In this way, the novel’s structure helps to convey one of its concerns—that people’s pasts intertwine with both the present and the future.
In these opening chapters, Hannah evokes a modern culture of corporate fraud by directly comparing The Shop with both Enron and Theranos. In her internal monologue, she assumes that because The Shop is doing noble work by protecting people’s online privacy, it cannot also be defrauding investors as did Enron and Theranos, two of the most infamous cases of twenty-first-century corporate fraud. But Theranos also espoused an ostensibly noble goal—creating more effective blood-testing devices to diagnose disease. The guilt of these executives provides important context for the novel, especially as their examples create the assumption that Owen must be guilty. Ultimately, The Shop’s legal woes prove a red herring that obfuscates the real reason Owen flees, but juxtaposing the fictional company with real examples of corporate fraud creates a plausible motive for his flight for the book’s characters as well as its readers.
The novel persistently poses questions about the stability and reliability of knowledge, and these chapters introduce this important theme. Throughout this section, readers learn a lot about Hannah’s ability to intuit less-than-obvious conclusions. For instance, she is perceptive enough to analyze the appeal woodturning has for her, even identifying that what most appeals to her is not the ability to change the wood so much as the determination it requires to persist with a project. Still, her fraught relationship with Bailey often hinges on moments that Hannah misreads. Hannah’s inability to read Bailey well contributes to their distant relationship, despite Hannah’s efforts to improve their connection. Hannah’s assumptions are not unreasonable, but they indicate a rush to judgment that frequently backfires on her. They also reveal to readers that, though Hannah may pride herself on her ability to read situations, her interpretations are not impeccable. A significant aspect of her character growth over the course of the book concerns her increasing ability to think more deeply about facts she thinks she has and embracing the reality that she cannot know everything.
The elaborate pasta dish that Hannah cooks as a surprise for Bailey symbolizes the dynamics of their complicated relationship. Hannah wants to impress Bailey, so she goes to great effort to reconstruct something Bailey had loved, even going into San Francisco to get the right bread. Hannah thinks about how Bailey does try with her, but that she herself tries too hard with Bailey. Their interactions over the pasta reflect this dynamic. Bailey makes a good-faith effort to taste the pasta but quickly rejects it because Hannah has burned the dish. Hannah, meanwhile, has made ten servings of an elaborate dish for a family of three. Even though Hannah knows her actions are excessive and unlikely to succeed, she is so eager for Bailey’s approval that she cannot control her impulses.
