A short chapter near the end of Laura Dave’s sixth novel, The Last Thing He Told Me, stands out from the rest of the book. Titled “Everyone Should Take Inventory,” it’s an index of everything the protagonist, Hannah Hall, knows to be true about her husband, Owen Michaels.
“He would live on Pad Thai, given the choice. He never took off his wedding ring even to shower. He couldn’t turn off a movie, no matter how awful, until he’d made it to the credits. He loved taking his daughter for breakfast. He never ate breakfast.”
“That is the way we know somebody,” Dave tells TIME. “We know them in the quietest of moments, when we get to be the witness to someone’s life.”
The chapter is striking not just because of the writing—clear and sharp as a diamond—but also because, at this point in the story, everything Hannah thought she knew about her husband has been upended. And Owen has vanished.
An engineer building software to privatize online life, Owen works at a tech firm, The Shop, until it’s raided by the SEC and FBI. Then, Owen disappears, leaving behind a duffel bag filled with sixty thousand dollars for his 16-year-old daughter, Bailey, and a note for Hannah reading: “Protect her.”
Now, The Last Thing He Told Me has been adapted into a thriller miniseries, premiering Friday on Apple TV+, and starring Jennifer Garner as Hannah and Angourie Rice as Bailey. The show is co-created and executive produced by Dave and her husband, the screenwriter Josh Singer.
On the surface, The Last Thing He Told Me is a propulsive mystery about what happened to Owen (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Where did he go and why? But just beneath, a larger story unfurls about motherhood and the unconventional ways that family can form. Hannah and Bailey are familiar with loss, even…
