The Last Thing He Told Me

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Prologue Summary

The Prologue centers on Hannah Hill’s memory of her second date with Owen. Hannah and Owen had driven separately, and Hannah lost the valet ticket for her car. Owen asked Hannah about her previous boyfriends and told her he was happy that these “could-have-been boys” (1) had fallen away so he could be with her. Hannah recalls the beginning of their relationship by saying, “It was overwhelming, what seemed to live between us, right from the start” (1), and the reader is left with the sense that both Owen and Hannah were happily surprised by how easy their interactions were and how close they felt so immediately upon meeting.

On the same date, Owen ribbed Hannah about constantly losing things. It was good natured, playful teasing, but at the end of the Prologue, Hannah recounts a dream she has in the days after Owen’s disappearance. In the dream, Owen removes his wedding ring and remarks, “Look, Hannah [...] Now you’ve lost me, too” (2).

Chapter 1 Summary: “If You Answer the Door for Strangers…”

Hannah’s afternoon at home on her houseboat in Sausalito is interrupted by a knock on the door. The visitor is a twelve-year-old girl in a soccer uniform, who hands Hannah a note with her name on it and tells her that Owen approached her at her school and asked her to deliver the note to Hannah. Hannah immediately suspects this note will change her life, but her thoughts are interrupted by more mundane concerns: “Why hasn’t Owen just called me? Why is he involving this girl?” (6)

Initially, Hannah believes something must have happened to Bailey, Owen’s daughter, with whom Hannah does not have a close relationship. Hannah desperately wants to be closer to Bailey, but:

[made a] mistake, upon first meeting the guarded Bailey, of telling her that she looked younger than she was. It was the worst thing I could have done [...] Bailey has barely stomached me since, despite the fact that I now know better than to try to crack a joke of any kind with a sixteen-year-old (5).

Hannah does not seem to resent Bailey’s behavior, nor the fact that Bailey is the first priority in Owen’s life; instead, Owen’s intense love for Bailey will be the one thing Hannah knows for sure as events unfold over the next few days.

Hannah tries to make sense of the note and its odd appearance at her door: “I half expect Owen (my lovely and silly Owen) to jump out from the side of the dock, the rest of the soccer team giggling behind him, the lot of them letting me in on the prank I’m apparently not getting” (7). That does not happen. The young girl leaves, and Hannah opens the note, completely mystified. All that is written on it is “Protect her” (8). Her can only be one person: Bailey.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Greene Street Before it was Greene Street”

Hannah’s own memories about her childhood, her career, and her relationship with Owen give the reader background information about Hannah.

Hannah began woodworking because it was the work her grandfather, the only stable influence in her life, did. She was raised by her grandfather because, “My father, Jack, and my mother, Carole (who preferred that I refer to her as Carole), were largely uninterested in doing any childrearing” (9). Hannah’s father was a photographer who constantly traveled for work and when he was not working, still could not find time to visit his daughter in Franklin, Tennessee, where Hannah stayed with her maternal grandfather. Eventually, both parents abandoned Hannah to her grandfather’s care, and she grew up and followed in his career footsteps.

Hannah attributes her career success to a stroke of luck, when Architectural Digest ran a story featuring a dining room table she made and suddenly her work was in demand from high-end clients. One of those clients was Belle Thompson, the wife of Owen’s boss, Avett Thompson. Avett and Owen were in Manhattan on business when they stopped in Hannah’s showroom to check on a piece Belle had commissioned. Hannah describes her first impression of Owen:

He was such a confusing picture: This long-limbed guy with shaggy blond hair and sun-drenched skin, in worn-out Converse sneakers. All of which seemed at odds with his fancy sports jacket. It was almost like he fell off a surfboard into the jacket, the starched shirt beneath it (12).

Prior to meeting Owen, Hannah was engaged for two years but called off the wedding only a week before it was scheduled to happen. She gave up on meeting a genuinely kind man in Manhattan. Though she is instantly attracted to Owen, she refuses his invitation for a date. It is only when Owen is about to leave the showroom that Hannah uncharacteristically calls out to him. The two go to see a play and romance blossoms.

Because of her own fractured relationship with her mother, Hannah goes out of her way to make allowances for Bailey, as well as attempting to establish some sort of relationship with the girl. Hannah recalls an instance when she was five minutes late to pick up Bailey from school—an unforgivable affront: “Bailey is an exacting girl. Owen will tell you that this is a quality we have in common. Both his wife and his daughter can decipher everything about someone else in five minutes. That’s all it takes” (17). This statement, coming when it does on the evening Owen has disappeared, is rich with irony. Does Hannah really know Owen at all, despite her self-proclaimed extraordinary deciphering powers of deciphering?

Chapter 3 Summary: “Don’t Ask a Question You Don’t Want the Answer To”

As Hannah drives to pick Bailey up from play practice, she notes it has been 12 hours since she last saw Owen, two hours since the young girl delivered the mysterious note, and she has placed 18 unanswered calls to Owen, as well. Hannah longs for some explanation from Owen, but instead, Bailey gets in the car and shows Hannah a duffle bag full of money left in her locker along with a note from her father, in which he reminds Bailey, “You know what matters about me. And you know what matters about yourself” (23).

It is clear to Hannah, in this instance, that Owen is intentionally gone. When she and Bailey arrive home, Hannah vomits and Bailey offers her a joint, which Hannah assumes Bailey got from her older, nerdy boyfriend, Bobby. Hannah refuses, and the two go inside, where they are soon joined by Jules, Hannah’s best friend, about whom Hannah says, “Even Bailey loves Jules, despite the fact that I’m the one who brought her into Bailey’s life. This is who Jules is to everyone who is lucky enough to know her. Comforting, steady” (28). But Jules is not there to comfort anyone. Instead, she hugs Hannah and says, ”It’s all my fault” (28), and with this cliffhanger, the chapter ends.

Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis

The Prologue introduces the main characters and establishes their personalities: Hannah is forever losing things, Owen is patient and tolerant, both are pleasantly surprised by how quickly they develop feelings for one another.

The Prologue also introduces two small things that will return at the end of the novel: Owen’s wedding ring, and his use of the term “could-have-been boys” (1). Further, the Prologue begins the mystery at the center of the novel: Where is Owen and why has he left? The reader’s understanding of Hannah and Owen’s relationship at this point is that the couple has a particularly close relationship and a steady habit of communication, so it is particularly jarring when the novel virtually opens by saying: “The week after Owen disappeared [...]” (2). The juxtaposition of the obvious love between Owen and Hannah and Owen’s disappearance hooks the reader, and the casual, conversational tone of Hannah’s narration creates an intimacy between the reader and Hannah as narrator, allowing the reader to feel, from the beginning, that Hannah is reliable and trustworthy. This is important because the reader depends upon Hannah to both to describe and interpret the ensuing events.

Because the text originates from Hannah’s internal life, the story is not told in a linear fashion. Rather, there are segues and flashbacks following Hannah’s internal dialogue and thought processes. For instance, when Hannah opens the door to the young girl, who asks for “Mrs. Michaels” (5), Hannah momentarily considers an explanation of why she has not changed her name since marrying Owen, then segues to the painful memory of telling Bailey she looks young for her age, followed by a brief description of the houseboat’s interior layout. Hannah then transitions the reader (who is always privy to Hannah’s thoughts) back to the present with the conversational phrase, “But back to my twelve-year-old friend standing in the doorway, shifting from dirty cleat to dirty cleat” (6).

There is a great deal of foreshadowing in these chapters: On the second date, for instance, Hannah recalls that she said to Owen, “You barely know me” and Owen smiles and replies, “It doesn’t feel that way, does it?” (1). Hannah’s dream of “losing” Owen is another example of foreshadowing, as is the story of Hannah’s mother, who, when Hannah was six, devoted herself to winning her husband back from his girlfriend and abandoned Hannah. While this is interesting in terms of character development, what is striking about this anecdote is that Hannah says, ”But, when I look back now, I think my mother did me a favor exiting the way she did—without apology, without vacillation. At least she made it clear: There was nothing I could have done to make her want to stay” (10).This thinking—that it was ultimately beneficial to Hannah that her mother left since it was the best choice to be made—will inform Hannah’s actions in the wake of Owen’s departure, and guide the choice she makes regarding Bailey.

In another instance of foreshadowing, in the initial encounter between Hannah and Owen, she mistakenly calls him “Ethan” (14), which, she will find out two years later, is his real name. As the scene shifts back to Sausalito, where Hannah has made dinner for Bailey, the question of Bailey’s identity is foreshadowed, as well: “She doesn’t look much like Owen—her purple hair naturally a chestnut brown, her eyes dark and fierce” (15).

Owen’s departure throws Hannah into a chaotic reevaluation of their relationship and her own judgment. What does she know about Owen? Has she been a fool, to simply accept what he told her as truth? Did she ever really know Owen at all? When Hannah says that she can know someone in five minutes (17), this statement—coming when it does on the evening Owen has disappeared—is rich with irony. Hannah presents as a reliable narrator, but does she truly understand what her husband is capable of, despite her self-proclaimed extraordinary deciphering powers?

Hannah is a highly introspective character. For instance, when Bailey gets in the car with the duffle bag full of money and the note Owen left, Hannah prefaces her description of the rapid heartbeat and nausea that overcome her by telling the reader, “I consider myself to be pretty unflappable. You could say that how I grew up demanded it. So, there are only two other times in my life that I’ve felt this exact way: the day I realized my mother wasn’t coming back and the day my grandfather died” (23). Hannah comes across as a deeply wounded person who has sought to understand herself and her own vulnerabilities. The reader may not yet be sure whether they can trust Hannah, but the reader does want to protect her.

Cliffhangers are frequently used in the novel to heighten the tension—such as in the last line of the Prologue, and when Jules arrives at Hannah’s house. Hannah believes she will be comforted by her best friend’s presence, but Jules hugs Hannah close and says, “It’s all my fault” (28), leaving the reader racing towards the next chapter, eager to have this shocking statement explained.