The Last One at the Wedding

Maggie is Frank’s daughter. She “was only ten years old when her mother passed” (12), and Frank worries that she struggled growing up without a mother. Nevertheless, Maggie herself does not cite her mother’s death as a source of pain and unhappiness. She is presented initially through the lens of education and career aspiration. Maggie is intelligent and hardworking, and she lands a lucrative job at a successful tech company not long after graduating. She is driven and single-minded in her pursuit of a career that will afford her not only enjoyment and self-actualization but the opportunity to elevate her class position. This is because Maggie is extremely class-conscious. Although her father was successful in his career and sees his working-class status as a source of pride, Maggie still feels the stigma of having been raised what she would characterize as “poor.” She is ashamed of Frank’s lack of wealth and status, the house she grew up in, and the small town where she and Frank lived. Frank does note that he put her through college with his savings, but this fact does not seem to matter to Maggie. She wants to be wealthy and to define herself in opposition to her father. Maggie is also a highly manipulative individual who entirely lacks empathy or the capacity for guilt. She commits crimes as both an adolescent and an adult that have serious repercussions for other people without demonstrating any remorse. Although Frank is ignorant to the truth about Maggie’s behavior, Maggie is highly self-aware and is happy to let her lack of empathy guide her decisions. While the question of whether she is redeemable hangs in the balance throughout the text, ultimately, she is the novel’s antagonist.

Aidan is Maggie’s fiancé. Born into a wealthy family, Aidan grows up with extreme privilege. He is initially characterized through the framework of Frank’s suspicion. Aidan shows little interest in getting to know Frank and Frank reflects that “something’s off with this kid” (76). And yet, like many of the other characters in this novel, there is more to Aidan than initially meets the eye. Despite his affluence, Aidan has never fit in with his family. As an artistically-minded introvert, he bears little resemblance to his business-oriented father. Errol will ultimately reveal that Aidan is not his biological son, but Aidan’s misfit status in the Gardner family goes beyond genetics. He does not share their beliefs or values and does not derive his sense of self from his class position. Unlike his parents, Aidan has a stronger sense of right and wrong. He does help his parents to cover up Dawn’s murder, but the guilt that he feels as a result ultimately drives him to die by suicide. 

That he leaves Frank enough evidence to locate Dawn’s body demonstrates that he has a much stronger ethical center than either of his parents or Maggie. He is another character who Rekulak uses to engage with the idea that wealth harms individuals and families. Aidan, along with Dawn and Gwendolyn, becomes a casualty of his family’s power and privilege.

Tammy is Frank’s sister. She is a kind and caring person who, although not a mother herself, embodies the same spirit of parental love that is evident in Frank because she “spent the last decade hosting dozens of foster children” (35). Tammy specializes in children with particularly difficult pasts, and in her willingness to take in individuals who otherwise might struggle to find a suitable caretaker demonstrates true empathy. She is one of the novel’s primary moral centers in that she cares for others with a selflessness that is absent in characters like the Gardners. In addition to being empathetic, Tammy is also insightful and realistic in her assessments of people. Frank is initially ignorant of Maggie’s true nature, but Tammy points out that Maggie was manipulative and unempathetic even as a child. She recognizes Maggie’s many strengths but does not fail to see her weaknesses. She is circumspect in her judgment of people and understands the complexities of human nature. 

Along with Frank and Vicky, she is part of this novel’s broader argument about The Corrupting Influence of Wealth, particularly in the context of families and communities. However, she is momentarily swayed by the Gardners’ promise of a lucrative stock package. This suggests how difficult it is for anyone, even particularly ethical people, to maintain their convictions in the face of an offer like the one Errol made. Nevertheless, her temptation highlights the fact that she is part of an unjust and corrupt financial system that creates a disparity between people like her and the Gardners.

Errol Gardner is Aidan’s nonbiological father. Errol Gardner is the CEO of Capaciti, a successful tech startup engaged in developing new kinds of batteries. Although he appears affable, much lies below the surface. His career alone demonstrates this, as the business is linked to human rights violations due to cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Errol is an unethical man who uses his power and influence both to further his business interests and to get what he wants, even when what he wants is illegal, violent, or damaging to his family. He employs unethical individuals such as Gerry and Hugo and does not care when they have to skirt the boundaries of the law (or even commit crimes) to help the Gardner family or Capaciti. He is the embodiment of the text’s engagement with the idea that wealth is ultimately a corrupting force and is one of the novel’s antagonists.

He is also a serial adulterer whose many infidelities are deeply hurtful to Catherine and has had affairs with both Dawn Taggart and Maggie. His behaviors, which have disproportionately harmed women in the text, speak to the gendered nature of power in his world of tech startups and legal corruption. He exploits his patriarchal privilege to use and then dismiss the women around him and maintain a dominant social status.

Catherine is Aidan’s mother and Erroll’s wife. She is also privileged and had “grown up in the white-gloved world of cotillions and debutante balls” (37). She too embodies wealth and power, but she has been markedly disempowered by her husband’s bad behavior. She attempts to cope with her grief through an alcohol addiction and is a deeply unhappy character. 

While Catherine is therefore a partially sympathetic character, she is Dawn Taggart’s killer. She has no qualms about covering up Dawn’s death and does not hold herself to any ethical standards, even as she indicts her husband’s lack of ethics. She is therefore not redeemed and is an antagonistic figure by the novel’s end.

Gerry Levinson is the Gardner family’s attorney and “one of the best litigators in New England” (123). An old friend of Errol’s, he projects status and affluence. Because he uses his power and privilege to help the Gardner family in both their legal pursuits and in evading prosecution for their illegal activities, he embodies the idea that wealth has an inherently corrupting influence on both individuals and institutions. Along with the Gardner family itself, the police, and representatives of the local court system who decline to investigate the Gardners, he is part of the conspiracy that Dawn’s family identifies to obstruct the inquiry into her disappearance. Gerry also has a much younger wife whom Frank suspects to have been an escort after Errol offers to procure Frank a high-class sex worker. Although Rekulak does not mean to malign the character of sex workers, he does suggest that affluent men in positions of power use that power to purchase whatever they want, even people, no matter the cost to others.

Vicky is Frank’s hairdresser. They have developed a friendship of sorts during the many years of their acquaintance, and Frank realizes at the beginning of the novel that he has romantic feelings for her. He characterizes her as “a smart inquisitive person” and has respect for her intelligence as well as for her kind and helpful personality (321). Vicky cares for Frank and goes out of her way to help him as he navigates the stress of the wedding, demonstrating that she shares Frank’s community-oriented spirit of caring. This also makes her a sage character in the text, who offers the hero advice to catalyze the plot. 

Vicky is a devoted mother, although she lost one of her children to addiction. Vicky is devastated by this loss but has developed a more thorough and nuanced understanding of The Strength and Pitfalls of Parental Love as a result of this tragedy. She explains to Frank that parents never truly see their children for who they are. Their love is so great that they ignore their children’s character flaws and moments of poor judgment. She explains this truth gently, knowing that Frank is still reeling from the shock of his realizations about Maggie’s character. Vicky’s backstory is one of the key ways that the text engages with this theme, and although her role in the story’s action is not large, she is an important secondary character.

Hugo is the Gardners’ groundskeeper and property manager at Osprey Cove. On the surface, he is a calm, affable, competent man, but as the story unfolds it becomes increasingly evident that there is much more to Hugo than his exterior. Frank eventually learns from Aidan that Hugo is wanted in the Democratic Republic of Congo for his role in some serious human rights violations. He managed the family’s mining interests there and is reported to have taken part in both systemic violence and trafficking. Hugo, like Gerry, embodies the far-reaching and sinister nature of the family’s influence. He is happy to commit crimes, even murder, for the family and to cover those crimes up without shame or remorse. 

Aidan alleges that Hugo killed Dawn and tells Frank at one point that Frank ought to be more careful around him. Hugo’s presence on the property grows more and more sinister and, like the spider infestation, he embodies the danger that lurks just below the surface at Osprey Cove. That he is ultimately extradited speaks to an unpleasant truth first uttered by Maggie: Although the Gardner family requires the help of a wide cast of characters, it is only the family members themselves who evade prosecution. People like Hugo (and even Maggie) become collateral damage.