The Last Thing He Told Me

The title of Chapter 13 is another authorial nod to those in the know, as “Keep Austin Weird” is a slogan for the city that organically developed from a statement by a caller to an Austin radio show in 2000. The slogan caught on and was adopted on several fronts. This is a clever method of drawing the reader into the story, which Dave also employed in Chapter 11 when she titled the chapter after a popular children’s book. The more Dave mixes reality and fiction, the more the reader is willing to suspend disbelief and fully engage with the story.

When Hannah mentally admonishes Owen for not telling her to advise Bailey to take a jacket on the plane, she is doing what people do in the face of great betrayals or grief: focusing on one small, manageable detail about which to be angry. The reader is reminded that while Hannah has kept a tight lid on her emotions, she cannot help but feel abandoned by Owen. This is significant because the feelings of abandonment are deeply rooted in Hannah’s childhood, and her desire to avoid inflicting the same damage on Bailey will inform the decision Hannah makes at the end of the book.

The small gesture Bailey makes by switching drinks with Hannah on the plane implies that Bailey knows something about Hannah’s habits, perhaps that Hannah actually wanted a real Coke, but ordered Diet Coke out of habit or a concern for calories. When Bailey switches the drinks, it signals a softening towards Hannah—a stark contrast to Bailey’s statement to the stewardess: “I’m not hers” (95).

As the two make their way through Austin, Hannah stifles her anger toward Owen for the predicament in which he has left them, and encourages Bailey to tell her anything she remembers about Austin. Childhood memories, Hannah has read, are often forgotten, but “we get them back. They often come from returning to a place and then being allowed to experience it in the same way you experienced it the first time” (104). The reader is reminded that Hannah’s childhood traumas lie just below the surface and guide Hannah’s decisions as she navigates the aftermath of Owen’s disappearance.

The title of Chapter 14, “Who Needs a Tour Guide?”, while ostensibly about the visit to Austin, is also a reflection of Hannah’s solitary quest to discover why Owen has left. Bailey is Hannah’s companion but is often at odds with Hannah and beyond that, Hannah has only Jules back in San Francisco only tangentially involved in unraveling the mystery.

When Belle calls Hannah and raves about her own husband’s innocence, Hannah has a moment of clarity during which she realizes this is likely how she sounds to other people:

And I hear it then, what people [...] must hear when they’re talking to me. I hear the crazy [...] Maybe that’s what happens when the bottom falls out, you lose the ability to modulate—to make your words make sense to the rest of the world (110).

This realization suggests Hannah may not be so certain of her belief in Owen’s innocence, which once again heightens the tension of the story and raises the stakes for Hannah, who, if she is wrong about Owen, might also be wrong about other things in her life. Furthermore, when Hannah hangs up on Belle, the possibility of having an ally in the one woman who might understand what Hannah is going through ends. Hannah will have to get out of this situation by herself and save Bailey in the process.

Hannah initially demurs when Bailey asks who was on the phone, but Bailey presses Hannah, saying, “No one can protect me from this. So how about you agree to be the person who tells me the truth?” (112). Hannah tells Bailey about Belle’s phone call, which signals another positive shift in their relationship.

As Hannah recalls the odd scene with Owen at the hotel bar in San Francisco, Owen despairs of his daughter’s growing independence, pending adulthood, and subsequent departure from the family home. He tells Hannah, “There is going to come a time when I won’t be able to keep her safe anymore, not from anything,” (117). This statement, made three months before he disappeared, foreshadows what Hannah will soon discover: The day Owen feared had, in fact, arrived.

The piggy bank on the hotel bar in front of Owen is glaringly out of place. Hannah considers the fact that Owen had collected it—along with other things of Bailey’s and brought it to San Francisco—as some sort of sentimentality. Yet the piggy bank is a clue to be revisited in subsequent chapters, when Hannah realizes that, like Owen’s will, the piggy bank bears the name “L. Paul.”