The Inmate

Brooke’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her son, Josh, Shane is an unrepentant murderer. As a teenager, Shane is cocky, charming, and manipulative. Through Brooke’s eyes, readers see Shane as misunderstood—a good guy seen as a hoodlum because of his family’s poverty. However, McFadden offers hints about Shane’s true personality; readers are meant to pick up on things that the naïve Brooke doesn’t see. Shane beat up a classmate and put him in the hospital for insulting Shane’s mother, actions that show that Shane is capable of extreme violence. Additionally, Shane’s passive-aggressive decision to bring up the fact that Tim dated the murdered Tracy Gifford is an obvious ploy to make Tim look guilty in front of Brooke—manipulation that hints at Shane’s willingness to use elements of the truth to bend Brooke’s understanding of reality.

As an adult, Shane is characterized as rough, charming, and even more manipulative. In prison, Shane’s violent tendencies come out in fights with other inmates, while his ability to con women with his good looks and sex appeal resulted in a former nurse supplying him drugs. Shane claims that the events of that horrifying night did not change him as much as his false imprisonment has: At every opportunity, the now bitter and angry Shane tells Brooke that he is innocent of the murders in an attempt to elicit her sympathy about his plight. Shane’s mistreatment at the hands of the guard Marcus, who is the same person Shane beat up as a teenager, seems to point at the novel’s interest in the inequities of the prison system. However, the novel keeps him a flat character as well—a man whose main desire is to kill the people around Brooke and then Brooke herself.

Tim Reese, Brooke’s former neighbor and childhood best friend, is the only other survivor of the massacre at the farmhouse. As a teenager, McFadden characterizes Tim as territorial, stubborn, and secretive—an awkward, good-looking young man who ignores the romantic overtures of his classmates because of his lifelong crush on Brooke. Tim does his best to let Brooke know his feelings, so when Shane reveals Tim’s history with Tracy Gifford, Tim doesn’t want Brooke to learn that he showed interest in a girl other than her.

Adult Tim’s role in the novel vacillates between protagonist and antagonist. Initially, McFadden characterizes Tim as a potential romantic interest for Brooke. However, as the novel progresses, Tim appears to be a sadistic killer who likes to remind Brooke of the past by wearing sandalwood aftershave and giving her the exact necklace someone used to strangle her. These things allow Brooke to easily believe Tim capable of murder when a body is found in his basement.

In the end, while Tim is proven to be a victim of Shane and Pamela’s vindictive manipulation, he is not nearly as naïve as Brooke. As Josh reveals in the Epilogue, Tim warned him about the danger posed by Shane—a prescient alert that allowed Josh to avoid falling for Shane’s fatherly charm offensive.

Seeming side character Margie, Josh’s kind grandmotherly babysitter, offers Brooke the maternal influence she never got from her own parents. Margie accepts Brooke’s single-motherhood and gives helpful parenting and romantic advice. Margie explains to Brooke how nervous Josh is to start school or how anxious he is to know if Tim is his father. Margie also encourages Brooke to date Tim, describing him as a good influence on Josh. Brooke barely knows Margie but quickly becomes reliant on the older woman’s motherliness. One of the novel’s plot holes is that it never describes anything concerning about Margie—no warning signals that she might not be who she claims to be.

When Margie reveals herself to be Pamela Nelson, Shane’s mother, the novel proposes that for years, Shane and Pamela have been plotting how to take Josh from Brooke—a scheme that relied on staging a fatal car accident, dramatically altering Pamela’s appearance, Shane pretending to only work out Josh’s age when Brooke slips up in a conversation, and Pamela being a great actress. More plot holes follow when Pamela confesses to helping Shane kill Brooke’s friends the night of the farmhouse massacre. For instance, why kill the others when Brooke was the target? Pamela’s unmotivated confession allows Brooke to wrestle away her gun; it also lets Tim get out of prison. Ultimately, Pamela’s inexplicable actions mark her as more of a plot device than a character.