Just Another Missing Person

The novel’s conclusion is highly suspenseful. Chapter 43 ends with Julia in a trunk with a gun pointed at her, and then there is a gunshot. The first sentences of Chapter 44, however, make it clear that Julia survived her abduction. In the same chapter, Patricia drops the case against her before it begins. Thus, Part 3 introduces new mysteries even as the larger mysteries of the novel are solved. The closing chapters answer the question of who was shot and by whom as well as why Patricia dropped the cases, and all answers involve Julia’s informant Price.

Price’s actions throughout the novel, while not always legal, adhere to a set of ethics, including protecting Julia. When Julia and Price arrange Jonathan’s body to look like a suicide, McAllister again highlights the ambiguity of Julia’s ethics, raising the question of The Distinction Between Cops and Criminals. Lewis shows his continued willingness to engage in criminality when he asks Price to blackmail Patricia, an echo of his blackmail of Julia at the beginning of the novel.

Part 3 wraps up several other loose ends, including Sadie’s disappearance and the connected issue of Matthew’s guilt or innocence. Although Julia solves the mystery, an arrest is halted by her abduction. The reader, however, is privy to Lewis and Sadie’s reunion and her explanation of why she is in hiding. Her revelation that she is hiding from Jonathan answers the question left open at the end of Part 2.

The resolution of Matthew and Emma’s story deepens the novel’s themes concerning parenthood. He comes clean about his part in Sadie’s disappearance, and Emma’s conscience is relieved as to his guilt and her culpability. Emma did some of the most important investigative work in the novel, providing Julia with important clues. In addition, she affirmed that Matthew is a good person and that she did a good job raising him.

With the revelation that Jonathan is behind Sadie’s disappearance and has used his position as an officer to perpetrate crimes for years, Julia is forced to reconsider her worth as an investigator. Her blind spot about Jonathan illuminates The Difficulty of Separating the Personal and Professional. She was blind to his criminality in part because of her personal relationship with him.

Over the previous chapters, Julia moved tentatively back toward Art. She begins to think that their marital difficulties are not wholly his fault and feels that her commitment to her job and her consequent neglect of their marriage might have contributed to his infidelity. She also recognizes that he has been a valuable comfort for her worries about work, among other things. She also now sees the limitations of a support network comprised solely of coworkers. When she finally does confide in him, she remembers he is a nonjudgmental listener who understands her deeply. And unlike her friends, his allegiance to her supersedes his interest in the law.

However, Julia still doesn’t understand Genevieve’s definition of freedom. She takes the blame for Genevieve’s crime, refusing her daughter the opportunity to atone. In the face of Genevieve’s distress over her decision, the narrator says that Julia “hopes this was the solution Genevieve could live with: a way to pay the price, without paying it herself” (356). Ironically, Julia’s commitment to The Sacrifices of Parenthood belittles Genevieve by denying her agency and the possibility of atoning for her deeds.