Never Lie

The narrative continues from Tricia’s point of view, in the present day. After falling asleep, Tricia wakes up at three in the morning. Ethan is asleep. Tricia explores the house and ends up in the secret room where Adrienne’s old tapes are. Tricia notices that Adrienne’s tapes are color-coded: The first session is labeled with blue ink, subsequent sessions with black, and the final session with red. There is one discrepancy to this order: Patient EJ has a regular series of tapes—blue, black, red—but then the tapes resume a week after the red tape (what should have been the last session). Further, Tricia notes that Adrienne was still seeing EJ when she disappeared. Tricia takes the red EJ tape to listen to.

EJ’s mother, Susan, wrote Adrienne a message in Chapter 6 to discontinue EJ’s sessions. Adrienne was relieved, thinking, “I will never have to see him again” (55). However, according to what Tricia has found, Adrienne did end up continuing sessions with EJ. The question, unanswered for now, is: Why?