57 pages • 1 hour read
Carola LoveringBye, Baby
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “October 13, 2023”
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses toxic relationships, mental health conditions, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse.
Billie sits with a sleeping baby in her arms. Through the open window, she hears Cassie scream from the apartment above. Fifteen minutes have passed since Billie took Cassie’s baby, Ella. Cassie shouts that she needs Billie, and Billie silences her phone as it begins to vibrate. Billie feels triumphant at Cassie’s sudden need for her.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Billie, August 24, 2023: 50 days before”
Thirty-five-year-old Billie is on her third date with Alex. She is attracted to Alex but is also wary of getting involved and hurting him. They agree to meet again when she returns from a work trip to Portugal.
Billie wants to tell her best friend, Cassie, about Alex. However, Cassie rarely returns her calls or messages, using the excuse that she is busy with her new baby. When Billie returns to her apartment in the Village, she immediately checks Cassie’s Instagram account for new posts. Cassie Adler is beautiful, owns a SoHo boutique selling high-end apparel, and has 48,000 Instagram followers. Cassie posts about her daily activities, and Billie is addicted to watching her content.
Billie last saw Cassie three months ago when she visited Ella for the first time. Despite Cassie’s persistent failure to contact her, Billie sends another message suggesting they should meet.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Cassie, August 25, 2023: 49 days before”
Grant does not understand his wife’s need to share her life on social media. She is currently promoting the opening of her new store in East Hampton and reads the comments of her enthusiastic followers with pleasure.
Cassie feels that she has outgrown her friendship with Billie in the past three years since marrying Grant and having a baby. However, Billie’s message inspires guilt over the many times she has failed to reply. She agrees to meet Billie for a drink that night.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Billie, Summer 2000”
In the summer of 2000, 12-year-old Billie goes to the town pool in Red Hook with her friend, Ashton. When Ashton goes to the snack bar, a pretty girl with frizzy hair sits beside Billie, introducing herself as Cassie. When Ashton makes a hurtful joke about Billie’s weight, Cassie asks Billie to go into town with her. They leave Ashton at the pool.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Billie, August 25, 2003: 49 days before”
Billie feels nervous and excited as she meets Cassie in a wine bar. Cassie is now married to a hedge fund manager, her hair is sleek, and Billie notes she is wearing two Cartier Love bracelets.
Cassie is unimpressed when Billie reveals she is dating a police officer. However, after a glass of wine, Cassie claims she misses Billie and apologizes for not keeping in touch. Billie is delighted when Cassie invites her and Alex to dinner on the Labor Day weekend. The only drawback is that Grant’s cousin, McKay, and her husband, Tom, are also invited. Billie realized that McKay had replaced her as Cassie’s best friend when she was maid of honor at Cassie’s wedding. After spending less than an hour with Billie, Cassie claims she must return to Ella.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Cassie, August 26, 2023: 48 days before”
Cassie feels fortunate that Grant’s cousin is her best friend. McKay was one of the most popular girls in Cassie’s freshman year at Harvard, with an impeccable family pedigree. McKay initially seemed interested in Cassie when she revealed her family was from Greenwich. However, she lost interest when she learned that Cassie’s family moved to Red Hook. Cassie and McKay are now related by marriage, live close to one another in Manhattan, and spend most of the summer at their places in the Hamptons. McKay is Ella’s godmother and has two children: baby Finn and three-year-old Juliette. When McKay learns that Cassie invited Billie to dinner, she is shocked. Cassie now regrets the invitation, reflecting that Billie does not understand her life.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Billie, Fall 2001”
In eighth grade, Cassie and Billie are both pretty but envy one another’s appearance. Cassie wants Billie’s straight hair, while Billie, who is curvy, envies Cassie’s ability to eat whatever she wants and remain slender. Cassie receives an invitation from a freshman, Kyle Briggs, to the high school homecoming dance.
Billie lives with her mother, Lorraine. When Billie was four, her father left them for a woman named Melody. The mother and daughter share a close relationship and strongly resemble one another. However, Billie hates Lorraine’s boyfriend, Wade. Wade makes suggestive comments to Billie and Cassie when Lorraine is out of the room and stares at them in an overtly sexual manner. Billie tells her mother how Wade behaves with Cassie but does not reveal he treats her similarly. Lorraine dismisses the claim, believing that Billie is misinterpreting Wade’s behavior.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “Billie, August 26, 2023: 48 days before”
Billie loves her job as a luxury travel consultant. She works for her close friend, Jane, who founded a boutique luxury travel company, The Path. On a flight to Portugal, Jane discusses how she and her wife, Sasha, are struggling to find a suitable apartment in Manhattan. Jane is scathing of Cassie and the way she treats Billie. When Billie watches Cassie’s latest Instagram video, Jane points out that her obsession with her old friend is unhealthy. Billie admits that Cassie seems to judge her for choosing not to have children. She also acknowledges that Cassie would not own a store if it were not for her husband’s wealth. Jane has met Grant Adler and intensely dislikes him. Billie feels anxious as she thinks about Jane’s encounter with Grant and how it increased the strain on her relationship with Cassie.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “Cassie, August 31, 2023: 43 days before”
On the way to East Hampton, Cassie criticizes Grant for driving too fast and swearing in front of Ella. By the time they get to their destination, she is furious with him. The East Hampton house was part of Grant’s trust fund and is next to his parents’ summer residence. Its elegant architecture and ocean views remind Cassie of her Grandma Catherine’s house in Cape Cod. Cassie continues to bicker with Grant while posting a photograph of the view on Instagram. She feels soothed by the gushing messages from followers.
Cassie takes further photographs of the most recently decorated parts of the house, describing them as “nooks and crannies” (49). The Instagram responses are primarily enthusiastic, but one message accuses her of flaunting her wealth in a faux-humble way. Cassie momentarily feels ashamed but then remembers McKay’s assertion that acquiring “haters” is the sign of a successful influencer.
Cassie visits her new store in East Hampton to check on its progress. She receives a call from her sister, Mara, who reminds Cassie of their parents’ forthcoming 40th wedding anniversary. Mara sarcastically points out that their mother follows Cassie on Instagram but would love to see her daughter in person. She is scornful of her sister’s lavish lifestyle and advises Cassie to tone down her designer accessories when she visits.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 8 Analysis
The first section of Bye, Baby establishes the novel’s narrative structure. The Prologue provides readers with a glimpse into the story's pivotal moment: Billie’s abduction of Cassie’s baby. Thus, Lovering indicates the story is a “whydunit” rather than a “whodunit.” Two separate timelines provide context to the circumstances that drove Billie to take her friend’s child. The first is an account of events beginning 50 days earlier. The second takes the form of flashbacks to the development of Billie and Cassie’s childhood, starting when they first met as 12-year-olds. As both backstories unfold, readers are given gradual insight into the nature of Billie and Cassie’s relationship and its transformation from a close friendship to a profound act of betrayal.
The novel presents the protagonists, Billie and Cassie, as foils. While they originate from the same hometown of Red Hook and live in New York City, they differ in character traits and lifestyles. Cassie’s privileged existence, funded by her wealthy husband, is illustrated through conspicuous status symbols such as her Manhattan penthouse apartment and Cartier love bracelets. She is also immersed in her new role of motherhood. Meanwhile, Billie enjoys the freedom of a single life, relatively free of materialistic trappings. She is content with her apartment in the Village, her budding relationship with a police officer, and the pleasure she derives from her work. Their contrasting lifestyles demonstrate the characters’ conflicting attitudes toward Class and Social Mobility.
As a domestic thriller, Bye Baby creates suspense and tension rooted in personal relationships and conflict. The alternating narrative viewpoints of Billie and Cassie convey The Shifting Dynamics of Friendship from dual perspectives. Their accounts immediately show an unequal balance of power in the relationship. While Billie remains deeply invested in the friendship, Cassie is conflicted. Her residual affection for Billie is demonstrated when she invites her to her dinner party. However, she regrets the decision afterward, feeling that Billie has become an anomaly in her life. Cassie’s increasing distance offsets Billie's neediness. Billie “feels like an unrequited lover” as she struggles to accept that Cassie has moved on (5). Depicting Billie’s desperation, Lovering suggests that close female friendships are comparable to love affairs in their intensity and the heightened emotions they evoke.
In these early chapters, the author also examines the role of social media in personal relationships. Despite being unwillingly consigned to the margins of Cassie’s life, Billie can paradoxically access the day-to-day details of her friend’s routine through Instagram. Although the content is seemingly personal, the experience is depersonalized as Billie is just one of thousands of followers, most of whom have never met Cassie. Lovering highlights the psychological effects of social media through Billie, a passive consumer of content, and Cassie, its creator. Their narratives illustrate that Billie is guiltily addicted to checking Cassie’s Instagram while Cassie feels nourished and validated by the responses she receives from her followers. The novel captures the typically sycophantic tone of such responses in messages such as “Ella is a beauty angel babe and so is her mama:)” (46). Significantly, Cassie’s reaction to such posts is wholly positive, while her interactions with Billie provoke more complex emotions, like guilt and anxiety. Lovering suggests that Cassie finds social media relationships with strangers satisfying precisely because they are superficial and, therefore, easier to maintain.
Chapter 8 ironically contrasts Cassie’s presentation of her life on Instagram and its reality. Cassie’s anger and resentment toward her husband are juxtaposed with the idyllic images she posts of their weekend away. Her editing of reality is also reflected in how she only photographs the most photogenic parts of the house. By drawing attention to Cassie’s small yet deliberate misrepresentations, Lovering highlights the dishonesty of social media content designed to provoke envy in others. She also touches on the strain created by maintaining an unrealistic image of perfection when Cassie asserts, “These days, with more and more followers stopping me on the street, I can’t afford to leave the house in less than my best” (50).
