The Act

The Act names Barbara’s killing of Carolyn Polhemus and the plan by which she intended to make Rusty Sabich appear responsible. In Rusty’s account, the crime is also an attempt to bind husband and wife through a secret: he would recognize who had done it, but be unable to persuade anyone else. That design makes The Act both a concealed crime and a lasting barrier between them.

Meaning and Design

Rusty describes Barbara’s plan as driven by a compulsion not only to kill Carolyn, but also to ensure that he would know she had done it. She could not simply tell him: he might disapprove or reveal the truth, and she expected that he would investigate the murder. As the prosecutor’s favored investigator, working alongside Dan Lipranzer, Rusty would encounter evidence that seemed to implicate him. In Barbara’s imagined outcome, he would understand the truth privately yet suffer in silence, either after she left or while remaining with her.

The plan was meant to make the murder appear unsolved to everyone else, including the public if Rusty said the case remained open. Barbara therefore arranged the scene to suggest a different kind of crime and relied on evidence connected to Rusty, including a glass. In her design, the crime itself would bring a kind of purification and discovery, allowing her to find what she wanted after Carolyn was gone. Rusty’s later description reveals the irony in this intended intimacy: Barbara meant the secret to create a private bond, but its consequences became a burden neither spouse could share openly.

The Plan Unravels

Barbara did not anticipate the range of forensic and investigative evidence that could expose traces she had not intended to leave. Fibers from the carpet in her home and hairs connected her to the scene; the analysis of the semen specimen and records of a telephone call also pointed beyond the explanation she had constructed. A third fingerprint on the glass became another trace. The evidence did not unfold according to Barbara’s expectations, and Tommy Molto’s shadow investigation picked up details she had not meant to leave behind.

As the case closed around Rusty, Barbara found herself in a position she had not expected: she felt sorry for him. He suffered more than she had intended, and she was ashamed. She cared for him through the ordeal and stood ready to save him by telling the truth, though that disclosure ultimately proved unnecessary. The failure of her plan changed the emotional meaning of The Act: what had been intended as a private test of devotion became a source of shame and a threat to the marriage.

Guilt and the Marriage

Rusty calls the aftermath tragic even as he acknowledges that things between him and Barbara have improved and that passion and feeling have returned. The improvement does not erase the crime. The Act stands between them as something he cannot say to her and she cannot say to him; Barbara cannot bear her guilt or the recollection of what she had done. The secret persists precisely where their relationship has begun to recover.

In speaking with Dan Lipranzer, Rusty adds that Barbara, not he, was the one who left. He had been willing to try to continue the marriage, despite how unstable he considered it, and he frames her deed as having been done because of him rather than out of love. He does not call their positions even, but suggests that both would have had something to make up for. The phrase The Act thus gathers together the murder, Barbara’s intention to implicate Rusty, and the unresolved debt between them: a private truth that neither confession nor renewed feeling can turn into a shared, uncomplicated future.