After Patrick comes home, Mary assumes all is well; however, she is given a couple of clues that Patrick isn't quite himself. He finishes his drink far too quickly, and he makes a second drink far stronger than the first drink. With his liquid courage, Patrick then proceeds to tell his doting wife that their marriage is essentially over. Mary is devastated, and readers are told that her first instinct was to assume that she was imagining the entire situation.

Mary thinks to herself that going about her normal business will somehow make it so that her present reality is not real, so she announces that she will get the meal ready. This is essentially her only conscious decision for a few paragraphs. Readers are told that Mary couldn't feel anything at this point. She's completely dazed, and readers are specifically told that her body is working on automatic. Mary continues to make dinner because her body is working off of muscle memory. She isn't thinking. She is doing. That lack of thought and automatic body movement is also what causes Mary to club Patrick across the head and kill him. It takes Patrick's body hitting the floor to finally snap Mary out of her mental stupor.