“It was one of the great ironies of my life that I’d inherited all of my mother’s features, but none of the magic with which they’d come together on her face. She’d been beautiful. I was odd. Odd-looking, oddly quiet, always the odd one out.”

Cassie’s life and sense of self is defined by her mother in more ways than one, especially after her mother is gone. Like the haunting memory of the bloody dressing room, Cassie cannot escape the way she looks. Her appearance is a constant reminder of what she has lost and what she feels she has never had: the ability to fit in. This moment also highlights how similar physical features represent biological family, which becomes significant after the reveal of Lacey Locke as the killer and Cassie’s aunt.

“I hadn’t ever talked about this, not even with Mom, who’d taught me the parts of it that could be taught. People were people, but for better or worse, most days, they were just puzzles to me. Easy puzzles, hard puzzles, crosswords, mind-benders, sudoku. There was always an answer, and I couldn’t stop myself from pushing until I found it.”

Briggs is the first to verbalize Cassie’s talent, which forces her to confront how she sees people: not as people but as things to be interpreted and put into categories. This dehumanization facilitates her isolation and inability to connect with others. It also shows how the behaviors and beliefs we adopt in childhood become second nature and out of our control as we grow older.

“I cared about my grandmother. I did. And I knew how hard she and the rest of the family had tried to make me feel loved, no matter how I’d come to them or how much of my mother there was in me. But I’d never really belonged here. A part of me had never really left that fateful theater: the lights, the crowd, the blood. Maybe I never would, but Agent Briggs was offering me a chance to do something about it.”

Cassie’s experience with her father’s family shows how sometimes being family does not inherently give way to a familiar connection. Because her family has made an effort, she begins to wonder if she herself is incapable of forging that connection. She feels damaged by her past, and Briggs’s offer presents her with the opportunity to actively engage in her own life, whereas previously her choices have been made for her.