Content Warning: This section of the guide references domestic abuse and drug addiction.

“A sequence of events so perfectly timed, there could be no room for error, and now I sit, hours away from executing it. The hiss of steam clouds the air around me.”

Before she has her epiphany about The Pretty Lie of Escape, Claire defines herself by her care and resourcefulness in plotting her flight. Under the watchful eye of her volatile husband, she squirrels away money, secures new identity papers, and plots to have it all waiting for her in Detroit. That she is in a sauna obscured by heavy mist foreshadows Rory’s shattering of her carefully laid plan.

“A person doesn’t just walk out of her life and disappear. Why can’t anyone find her?”

In the lead up to her flight, Claire imagines the consternation of her husband and his staff as they gradually realize that Claire was smarter and emotionally stronger than they ever suspected. The irony is that this voice in her head foreshadows the failure of her attempt: As it turns out, a person cannot just walk out of their life. 

“And then I end the call, doubt tumbling around inside me, feeling as if I have just slipped into a nightmare—spinning, turning, three hundred sixty degrees of danger.”

Claire is not sure she can separate logic from paranoia—an example of The Effect of Domestic Abuse. She struggles in the aftermath of finding her entire plan undermined by the whim of her predator husband. So close to freedom actually means so far from freedom.