The Couple Next Door

Lapena opens the novel with little to no exposition. The Conti family is given little context. The other characters are barely introduced, and no back-stories are offered. The reader never even meets Cora before she is gone. The novel’s abrupt turn of direction thus places the reader into the role of the detective, introduced into a set of circumstances and a cast of characters who each appear mysterious enough to have had something to do with the baby’s disappearance. The only explanation presented as unlikely in these opening chapters is the possibility of some random criminal act. Everything about the crime suggests haphazard planning, criminals either too new or too stupid to attend to details. In this, Lapena influences the reader to share Detective Rasbach’s initial conclusion: too much evidence suggests a poorly executed inside job, and something “doesn’t feel right” (14).

The novel’s opening chapters hinge heavily on Anne Conti. She initially seems a likely candidate for harming the baby: emotionally high strung, given to mood swings, and terribly uncomfortable with motherhood. Through the novel’s use of shifting omniscient narrative point of view, Anne shares her guilt leaving the baby alone even for a few hours: “They will be judged, by the police and by everybody else. Serves them right, leaving their baby alone. She would think that, too, if it had happened to someone else” (11). Anne is wracked by guilt not just because the baby is gone but also because after six months, she is still struggling with maternal bonding. Cora has become a test that Anne appears to fail every day. Breast-feeding has not worked. Cora is fussy and constantly cries. The diagnosis of postpartum depression and Anne’s estrangement from her own mother make Anne even more suspicious to Rasbach, as Lapena uses stereotypical assumptions about mental health to misdirect the reader toward suspecting the new mother.

Against the emerging portrait of Anne as an unstable new mother, the emerging portrait of Marco moves the opposite way. If Anne seems guarded, emotionally distant, and inexplicably burdened with guilt, Marco seems cool and focused. In his chapter segments, he professes his love for the missing child and his support and concern for Anne as she struggles through her depression: “He and Cora have had a happy little bond of their own, the two of them, waiting it out, waiting for Mommy to return to normal” (34). While omniscient narration is typically used to reveal character motivations that would otherwise be unknown to the reader, Lapena uses Marco’s early point-of-view segments to mislead the reader into thinking of Marco as a devoted father.

When Anne’s parents arrive within hours of the abduction, Marco feels like an “outcast” because of his haughty in-laws’ long-standing dislike of him. Through this dynamic, Lapena introduces class constructions to the novel. Marco’s family is blue-collar working class; Anne’s is old money. Anne and her parents’ snobbery and sense of emotional isolation—which Marco terms “their familiar three-persona alliance” (33)—generates additional sympathy for Marco. As Anne hyperventilates, as her mother refuses to crack the icy façade of her upbringing, and as her stepfather treats the missing baby as a business deal to negotiate, Marco becomes the face of the family in crisis when he reads the press statement: “We have no idea who would steal our beautiful, innocent little girl. We are asking for your help” (49).

The introduction of Marco and Anne suggests the progress of Rasbach’s investigation. Given the lack of contrary evidence, the reader assumes whoever took the baby knew the house, knew the Contis’ schedule, and knew to disable the backyard lights that led to the garage. The novel offers a mother struggling to understand the dynamics of motherhood and a father struggling to maintain emotional equilibrium under enormous pressure. Only at second reading does Marco’s prepared statement, with his protestation of helplessness, evidence a harsh irony, as he is later revealed as the kidnapper himself. Only after second reading do Anne’s struggles with postpartum depression and her dissociative disorder become significant, particularly her certainty early on that she might have had something to do with killing her child. What is first read as suspicion later becomes sympathetic.

Richard Dries appears in these early chapters as the single clear-thinking family member, able to see the kidnapping for what it is: a business deal. From the moment he enters the novel in Chapter 5 he is straightforward and direct with “a confidence about him that is almost aggressive” (35). Richard dismisses the idea that any amount of money (his wife’s money, specifically) is too great to get back his granddaughter. He bluntly guarantees the money and the negotiations begin. As with Marco and Anne, Lapena establishes a reversal for Richard; his confidence is not the result of moral certitude, but evidence that he is the mastermind of the kidnapping.