Five Years Later. Or Eight. Or Ten.

“Five Years Later. Or Eight. Or Ten.” is the novel’s uncertainly dated glimpse of Hannah Hall’s life after Owen Michaels disappears. At a Los Angeles design exhibition, Hannah has made a home near Bailey Michaels and built a career of her own, but she still lives as if unseen watchers might be waiting for Owen to return. When a changed-looking man enters the showroom wearing the oak wedding ring she made for Owen, an encounter that might have been mistaken recognition becomes a brief, unmistakable reunion—and another separation.

A Future Without a Settled Date

The heading refuses to assign this scene a precise place in the chronology: it might be five, eight, or ten years later. That uncertainty frames the future not as a cleanly measured period of recovery but as an interval whose exact length matters less than the fact that Hannah and Bailey have continued living without Owen. Hannah is in Los Angeles, and Bailey lives there too, not far from her. Their shared city and proximity suggest an established life together, even as Owen remains elsewhere.

Hannah has sold the floating house after Bailey graduated from high school. The sale marks a concrete change in their domestic life, but it has not persuaded Hannah that they are safe from the people who might be watching for Owen. She assumes they continue to keep tabs on her and Bailey in case Owen risks coming back to see them. Her daily operating assumption is that surveillance persists whether or not he returns; changing houses has not changed the danger as she understands it.

That vigilance has become habitual and isolating. In airport lounges and outside restaurants, Hannah sometimes thinks she sees the watchers, though she does not know who they are. She studies anyone who looks at her for too long. The suspicion keeps too many people from getting close, a consequence she can accept because she has the people she needs—except for one. Her brief admission of that absence holds the emotional contradiction of the period: she has a life and a close bond with Bailey, yet Owen’s absence remains part of its daily shape.

Hannah’s Work and Bailey’s Ordinary Life

The scene opens at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, where Hannah is taking part in a First Look exhibition with twenty-one other artisans and producers. She is debuting a collection of white oak work, mostly furniture but also bowls and larger pieces, in a showroom provided for the event. The exhibition offers potential clients exposure to her work, while also functioning like a reunion with architects and colleagues who stop to catch up.

By the approach of six o’clock, the professional sociability has become tiring. Hannah finds herself looking past people instead of at them, eager for a reason to end the day. Bailey is due to meet her for dinner, and Hannah is watching for her. Bailey plans to bring Shep, a hedge funder she has recently started dating, and insists Hannah will like him. Hannah’s wry accounting of the new boyfriend’s occupation and name, set against Bailey’s previous boyfriend John, who was unemployed, makes dating in Bailey’s twenties sound like an ordinary concern. That ordinary anticipation offers a sharp contrast to the danger and absence that still govern Hannah’s private life.

The Man in the Showroom

The stranger arrives casually, wearing a backpack. His appearance seems designed to frustrate recognition: shaggy hair cut short and darker, a crooked nose, and a rolled-sleeve button-down that exposes tattoos running down his arm and across his hand and fingers. Hannah cannot simply recognize the face. She first notices the wedding ring, a slim piece of oak she made for Owen and knows intimately. The crafted object carries a history that the changed appearance cannot erase.

Even with the ring, Hannah hesitates. The man looks so unlike Owen that she wonders whether she has mistaken him; this is not the first time she has thought she saw Owen everywhere. The exhibition’s crowd supplies a plausible cover for a reunion that cannot become public or sustained. The ring establishes a private connection, but it does not immediately quiet her uncertainty.

As the man prepares to leave, he says something only Owen would say: “The could-have-been boys still love you.” He does not look at Hannah, and his voice is low. The familiar phrase transforms the ring from a sign she might be misreading into part of a recognition supported by their shared past. Hannah tries to thank him, though she is unsure whether she says the words aloud; he nods. Their exchange is intimate in its recognition and radically limited in everything it permits.

A Reunion That Ends in Disappearance

Owen heads out the way he came, then disappears into the crowd. Hannah does not dare watch him go or look in his direction. She keeps her eyes down and pretends to organize papers as heat rises in her cheeks, hoping that no one nearby notices her reaction. From the outside, Owen can pass as another design enthusiast moving between booths; Hannah’s knowledge of him remains private.

The reunion therefore provides confirmation without resolving the separation. Owen is present long enough to be recognized and to offer a distinctive greeting, but he leaves before Hannah can answer or follow. Nothing in the scene establishes that he is returning home or that their life together can resume. Its closing emphasis instead falls on the familiar movements of arrival and departure: a ring made from oak, a sentence from their shared history, a nod, and Owen lost again among strangers. For Hannah, the future has become a life built close to Bailey and shaped by her work, but it still contains the missing person she cannot safely stop expecting to see.