The Likeness

Everyone emerges from sleep hungover and grumpy. Abby appears especially angry with Cassie, but she is unkind to everyone. Daniel is staring out the window while Rafe continues to sleep on the sofa, and Justin comes downstairs complaining that he is in pain and is convinced he has the flu. Cassie feels claustrophobic and longs to be away from the people in the house, so she covers her head and goes back to sleep on the chair until she can leave for her nightly walk.

Daniel waits for her in her room later and asks straight out who she is. Cassie signals she is wearing a mic, and they speak in code until she can remove it. She shows him her badge revealing she is Cassie Maddox, and after placing the mic near music, Daniel and Cassie go outside and out of the surveillance view. Cassie asks when he knew she was not Lexie, and Daniel tells her the onions were a big clue, but it was the kiss the night before that confirmed it. He says Lexie would have not reacted to it the way Cassie did because she was incapable of thinking ahead about consequences. He could tell Cassie has a boyfriend by the way she looked startled for a moment and decided to stop. Suspecting she had a boyfriend or a partner, Daniel called the police station asking for Sam O’Neill. The woman he spoke to informed him that O’Neill is in the Murder squad, which told him that Lexie is actually dead and confirmed that Cassie is an imposter. They discuss the ways Lexie is like Cassie, and Daniel tells her she did an excellent job impersonating the victim and that she seemed contented living at Whitethorn.

The conversation shifts, and Daniel explains how and why they all came to live together at Whitethorn. Daniel speaks philosophically about choices and consequences. He abhors capitalism and the way it traps humans into endless cycles of work and debt, saying that “[f]rightened people are obedient—not just physically, but intellectually and emotionally” (337). Daniel and the others wanted to leave freely by their own rules, and when he inherited Whitethorn, he saw it as a gift, and the house became a place where they all could be safe from systems of power and free from fear. The house was intended to be a place for free thinking and friendship. All the housemates were running from something in their past, and the house gave them a chance to start over fresh. Daniel made them all co-owners of the house because he did not want to be their landlord and he wanted them to feel that the house was a place of refuge. The love for his friends reminds Cassie of Rob and how they trusted each other completely. Daniel has many happy memories of their first days in the house, but he was never under the impression it would be perfect because he knows humans are flawed. He does reveal that some housemates have been intimate, but Daniel will not reveal who.

Cassie moves the conversation toward Lexie’s murder. Daniel reveals he knew all along Lexie was dead because he checked her pulse in the cottage, though when Cassie showed up, he was willing to hope she had somehow survived. Daniel refuses to tell her directly what happened, but Cassie tells him how she believed the murder happened, and he agrees that she has hit all the main elements of the crime. One of the roommates spontaneously stabbed Lexie during an argument in the Whitethorn kitchen, and Lexie ran to the cottage to escape. He said she was already dead when he found her, but Daniel refuses to say anymore. Cassie gives her theory of what happened with Lexie and Ned. Daniel insists Ned is more harmful than Lexie, asserting she was not cruel, and he knew about the entire plan but kept it a secret to protect the house and his friends. He proclaims he was willing to sacrifice anything to preserve what they had built together because they all believed Lexie would never hurt them. Daniel asks Cassie if she has considered what Lexie would think of the investigation and asks, “Haven’t you ever wondered if she may have been a willing participant in her own death and in the concealment of her killer…?” (348). Daniel asks Cassie to pack her things and leave, but she refuses, saying she must complete the mission. Even though Cassie recognizes Daniel knows his plans for a happy home with his friends have been destroyed, he still wants to protect his friends and what they have built together. Exposure of the murderer would kill them all. Cassie says she will stay wired and hope to catch something that will implicate the killer, and then Daniel tells her how they all met to underline how closely knit the group is. They were all outsiders in one way or another, and he met Abby first when they were freshman in college, but he did not meet Lexie until postgrad. Daniel does not beg for Cassie to drop the case, but he swears the housemates are all he has in life, and to lose them would be devastating.