The Husband's Secret

Rachel thinks about her new knowledge and the power it gives her. She can turn in John-Paul and end his life any time she wants. She thinks angrily about John-Paul’s insistence that Janie laughed at him; she finds the reason unequal to the consequence. Instead of calling the police, she calls Rob. Lauren answers and springs into action when Rachel asks if she can spend the night at their place. Before hanging up, she asks if Lauren has any more macarons. Lauren’s voice quivers when she says she does and that they can have some with tea.

Tess wakes up on Easter Sunday. Will is in bed with her, asleep. She thinks about how exciting something new is compared to the monotony and knowing of marriage. She wonders if she and Will will have to reveal something new and different to each other to make their marriage work again for them, and not just as a concession to Liam’s needs. Though she initially separates their bodies, she finally presses against Will’s back for warmth. They have sex.

Rachel wakes up on the sofa bed in Jacob’s room. He climbs into bed with her to cuddle. She thinks about Janie and Connor and John-Paul and what she’s going to do with what she knows about Janie’s death. Ultimately, she decides she’ll retire, sell the house, get a passport, and maybe even travel. She imagines Janie as a middle-aged woman telling her to go back to sleep—Rachel says she can’t sleep, but when the imagined Janie insists, she does fall asleep again.

On June 22, 1990, Checkpoint Charlie of the Berlin Wall is demolished. On the same day in Australia, Cecilia Bell meets John-Paul Fitzpatrick at a housewarming party.

In the hospital, Cecilia sits by Polly’s bedside and thinks about their new lives. She feels a complex mixture of hatred and love for John-Paul and knows that they’ll stay together to help Polly. She knows she is trying to find someone to blame other than herself—she sees Polly’s accident as the consequence of not having told Rachel the truth immediately. Polly awakens, and Cecilia prepares herself to explain the amputation to her daughter.

The Epilogue reveals both what will and could have come of the characters and the truth of what happened to Janie Crowley. Polly would have become a phenomenal tennis player. Connor Whitby will be overwhelmed with guilt at having not answered Polly’s call; it will not ease until he falls in love with the owner of a restaurant he goes to each week after therapy. Tess will fall pregnant with a second child, though she, Felicity, and her mother will never be sure if the girl is Will or Connor’s child.

None of them will ever know that Janie, had she attended her doctor’s appointment that day, would have received a life-saving diagnosis of Marfan syndrome. They will never know that she died of an aortic aneurysm, rather than traumatic asphyxiation. Had John-Paul been with another girl in the park, he would have been charged with assault, but the girl wouldn’t have died. Had Janie gone to her doctor’s appointment, she would have had life-saving surgery and then called John-Paul and broken up with him. She would have briefly and mistakenly married Connor Whitby. Less than six months later, she would have run into John-Paul again at a housewarming party, “just moments before Cecilia Bell walked in the door” (450). The Epilogue advises that “none of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have and maybe should have taken” (450).