Kill for Me, Kill for You

“Scott gave her love. But, more than that, he gave her safety and security. And it was those feelings that Ruth prized most of all. […] They were stable. Solid.”

In contrasting Ruth’s feelings toward her husband Scott before and after the attack, Cavanagh reveals the ways in which her trauma fundamentally alters her perspective on everything in her life, including her marriage. After her assault, Scott’s fierce loyalty is the only thing that allows Ruth to feel safe in the hospital and her new home.

“In any other world that meant he would lose his job—but not when his father owned the company. Some people, those with money and the ear of power, never pay for their crimes the way ordinary people do.”

Cavanagh’s exploration of The Limitations and Implicit Bias of The Criminal Justice System highlights the disparity in legal outcomes between powerful people and ordinary citizens across the novel. In this passage, Amanda suggests that the man she believes killed her daughter was able to avoid prosecution because of his father’s money and connections.

“The rest of them were discussing the mayoral elections and the news of a woman attacked in her home that had been doing the rounds on the local TV channels.”

Using Amanda’s narrative point of view, Cavanagh references a woman attacked in her home as a red herring that suggests that Amanda and Ruth’s stories are taking place at the same time. Withholding the reveal that Ruth’s plotline takes place 11 years prior allows Cavanagh to obscure the fact that Wendy and Ruth are the same person.

“There was a strange freedom enjoyed by her new friend, and Amanda found it just as intoxicating as the liquor. She had smiled tonight. And even laughed. It had been a long time since she’d done either of those things.”

This passage highlights the isolation of grief—Amanda gets pulled into Wendy’s orbit and subsequent crimes because the solidarity and connection she feels in her friendship with Wendy feels like a lifeline to her. The reference to intoxication hints at the idea that Amanda is not safe with Wendy.

“September eleventh would now have an additional significance for Ruth. It would mark three days until her next dark anniversary. There would be no tribute in light for that date. She knew September fourteenth would have no light at all.”

Ruth’s attack occurs on the night of a 9/11 tribute; as a result, she associates her home invasion with the terrorist attacks—a motif that Cavanagh uses throughout the novel. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, Ruth feels she is the only one impacted by the home invasion, leaving her alone in her pain. Ruth’s sense of isolation contributes to her PTSD.

“Are you talking about Mr. Blue Eyes here? Or are you really talking about Wallace Crone?”

Cavanagh uses an additional red herring device connecting Farrow and Hernandez to both Ruth’s case and Wallace Crone’s first case, inviting the readers to infer that both plotlines are happening at the same time, deepening the mystery. This device increases the impact of the revel that Ruth’s timeline occurs 11 years before Amanda’s timeline, and that Ruth is Wendy/Naomi.

“She wanted to kill him so badly, it had taken over her life. That had isolated her even further. She never spoke to friends, ex-colleagues—anyone, really, apart from Farrow. And here was someone fired with the same kind of hate that was keeping her alive.”

Amanda’s extreme isolation after the death of her daughter and husband makes her vulnerable to Wendy’s suggestion that they kill for each other. The fact that Wendy shares Amanda’s extreme emotional distress makes her seem like someone Amanda can trust and rely on.

“What drove him was that feeling he’d had while lying on cold white tiles in his high school shower block. He’d felt powerless. Utterly weak. Sending bad people to prison had given him a sense of fulfillment, even of revenge.”

In this passage, Scott suggests that he enjoyed working as district attorney because sending “bad people” to prison makes him feel a sense of triumph over his high school bullies. Scott’s fear of being powerless helps to explain his willingness to kill the man Ruth believes to be her attacker, underscoring his desperation to feel in control of his situation.

“He couldn’t hurt anyone else, and he’d died in pain. A friend had done this for her and, even though her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, there was a strange peace that fell upon her. Suddenly she felt free.”

This passage indicates that Amanda sees Wendy/Naomi as her friend, and not simply a stranger from therapy. The fact that news of Crone’s death makes her feel free demonstrates Amanda’s lasting anger and grief at the death of her daughter. However, Cavanagh suggests this sense of freedom isn’t strong enough to alter Amanda’s fundamental moral code, and she can’t quite fulfill her end of the bargain to kill Quinn in cold blood.

“In Amanda’s mind, she was not going to kill a man named Quinn who had raped and murdered a girl she had never met. No, Amanda was killing Crone tonight.”

Wendy/Naomi is able to convince Amanda to kill for her by manipulating her anger and grief at the death of her daughter and husband. This passage demonstrates Amanda’s rage, as she imagines killing a man who is already dead.

“The man’s face was cut and bloody, and only one perfect blue eye stared up at the ceiling. The other eye was gone. In its place were four inches of wine bottle that stood upright, like a chimney, from his eye socket.”

Cavanagh includes depictions of extreme violence and gore across the novel to emphasize the strength of the characters’ emotional landscape in the wake of trauma. In this instance, Scott’s murder of Patrick Travers is later revealed to be a mistake, as he is not the man who attacked Ruth. The violence of this murder contrasts starkly with Scott’s later remorse, which proves fatal.

“Ruth felt alone, unloved, and lost. Her fear and loneliness turned those tree branches into the nails of the vampire at her window. But it was more than that. Back then, at nighttime, every dark corner held a ghost or a scary face.”

Ruth’s traumatic home invasion causes her debilitating fear and anxiety. This passage suggests that Ruth’s childhood made her especially vulnerable to feelings of loss and loneliness as a result of her parents’ divorce.

“Mr. Blue Eyes entered his victim’s homes from the rear, breaking a window in the kitchen to gain access. This time one of the windows above the washbasin was broken. Ragged shards of glass still clung to the frame.”

In his passage, Cavanagh provides the first direct clue about the connection between Mr. Blue Eyes and the Amanda-Naomi plotline. As Farrow and Hernandez notice, the carefully choreographed plan that Naomi gives Amanda to kill Quinn mirrors the attack methodology of Mr. Blue Eyes.

“He looked at her, the skin beneath his eyes red and puffy from the tears. He wanted to believe Ruth. He needed to. She could feel his desperation to draw some meaning, some justification, from this terrible thing.”

After Scott kills Patrick Travers, he is filled with remorse and a depression that later proves fatal. Although Scott is initially characterized as a strong, protective force in Ruth’s life, he eventually experiences a role reversal, relying on Ruth to comfort and protect him.

“She was certain Naomi had known Quinn; no one wants a man dead like someone who knew him well.”

Although she eventually discovers that Naomi manipulated her and lied about her relationship to Quinn, Amanda still believes that there is a connection between the two. The irony of this passage is that, although Naomi does want Quinn dead, she doesn’t actually care if he is the person she believes him to be.

“She took a moment to admire the park. Lush green fields, willow and elm trees, a riot of birdsong in the early winter sunshine. The apartments and houses on this street were in various stages of decay. Old couches and mattresses lay outside some of them, and the trash bags were piled high out front of every building.”

In this passage, the contrast between the lush, lively park and the old, decaying buildings on the nearby street reflects the contrast between Ruth’s old life of fear and her new life of confidence after she believes her attacker has been killed. The revelation that Scott killed the wrong man sends her from joy back to fear, and the turbulence of her emotions causes her to experience a mental break.

“He thought of the corpse he’d left behind, the neck of the broken bottle buried in his face. That was an image that would stay with him like a scar, but he felt sure it would stay red and raw and never fade.”

In this passage, Scott compares the mental anguish of living with his crime to the physical scars his wife bears after her attack. Ultimately the novel suggests that mental pain can outlast physical pain after traumatic events.

“And seeing someone else with her pain, and the knowledge that Ruth in some way played a part in that, made the sinister stone in Ruth’s chest shrink. Like she had passed some of the poison from her system on to someone else.”

Although Scott feels anguished guilt at the sight of Travers’s widow, Ruth enjoys the obvious grief in her face. This passage suggests that she sees grief as a zero-sum game in which causing others pain lessens her own suffering.

“He felt disgust at himself, and his weakness, and his mistakes, and he couldn’t stand another goddamn second of it. If there’s enough guilt and shame, it becomes a fire. It consumes flesh like burning gasoline.”

Scott’s fear of being weak and powerless like he was while being bullied in high school leads him to kill Travers in defense of his wife. This passage suggests that he is disgusted both with his former, vulnerable self and his current, violent self, and that that disgust leads him to his death by suicide. Scott’s example is one of many demonstrating the lasting effects of traumatic events.

“Heavy chains were wrapped around the old oak chest in Ruth’s mind. She could see the brass edging on the chest’s corners, and the thick lock keeping its contents secure […] they were in place to make sure what was in the chest did not escape.”

Cavanagh introduces Ruth’s oak chest mental health exercise as a therapeutic tool that helps her contain her fears and hallucinations in the aftermath of the home invasion. By the end of the novel, the box has become Ruth’s way of subduing her humanity and her better instincts. The box acts as a powerful symbol of the lasting effects of traumatic events.

“Perhaps she could learn something she could use against him. In the end she had not, but she knew more about how some of these freaks come to be, how they kill, and, more importantly, how they get caught.”

Throughout the novel, Amanda, Farrow, Ruth, and other characters grapple with whether or not child predators and serial killers can feel remorse and experience change, pointing to The Rehabilitation of Violent Offenders as a central theme in the novel. The fact that Mr. Blue Eyes continues his killing spree in the novel’s conclusion suggests an open-ended resolution to this question.

“During that time she was content to be in a car with a good man who was willing to help her. She was not alone with her troubles, and there was still music and life, despite everything.”

Although Amanda is aware that she has been manipulated by Ruth, her loneliness and grief make her vulnerable to the manipulations of Billy. In this passage, Amanda’s sense of comfort around Billy is intended to distract readers from Billy’s secret identity as Mr. Blue Eyes.

“A man’s voice. Gentle and kindly. He was whispering, ‘Stop. Stop. Stop.’

‘It’s him, Scott. I know it,’ said Ruth out loud. ‘You can’t protect me. Just shut up.’ In her mind, she draped a heavy cloth over the box, and Scott’s voice quieted.”

This passage suggests that Ruth uses her mental box to repress the remnants of humanity keeping her from murdering people directly. The fact that Scott’s voice stays with her suggests that he had a powerful influence on Ruth’s mental health and sense of safety before his death.