Don’t Answer the Phone Summary: A Gripping Thriller
TL;DR: The Short Version
A good deed on an ordinary morning pulls Daniella Morris into a stranger’s life.
She stops a mugging on a quiet Brookline street and stays with the injured elderly woman until help arrives.
That single act of kindness introduces her to the victim’s son, Lucas Denman.
In Don’t Answer the Phone by Miranda Rijks, Daniella’s settled marriage, thriving business, and carefully built suburban life begin to buckle under a fixation she never invited.
The novel follows a fifty-two-year-old wife and mother navigating guilt, secrets, and escalating danger.
It is a domestic psychological thriller about what happens when a momentary lapse collides with someone who refuses to let go.
- Premise: A woman intervenes in a mugging and becomes the target of the victim’s obsessive son.
- Central tension: One night of infidelity gives a dangerous man leverage over her family.
- Structure: Thirty-one sections told through multiple first-person viewpoints.
- Key themes: Hidden suburban facades, obsession versus love, guilt, and inherited violence.
- Tone: Claustrophobic, fast-paced, and laced with cliffhangers.
- Note: The book contains domestic abuse, violence, and child death.
Don’t Answer the Phone Summary: The Full Story
Spoilers ahead. This section covers the plot in full, including the ending.
Daniella Morris is a fifty-two-year-old English expat living in Brookline, Massachusetts. She co-owns the Silken Stem, a high-end artificial flower boutique, with her friend Lesley Rennie.
Her husband is Dr. Grant Morris, an MIT professor. Their twin daughters, Arlyse and Tasia, are seventeen and preparing for gap years abroad.
With an empty nest approaching, Daniella persuades Grant to see a marriage counselor named Linda Gibson. The issue is a decade without sexual intimacy.
On her way to the first session, Daniella witnesses an elderly woman being attacked outside her Ivy Street home. She chases off the hooded attacker and rides in the ambulance with the victim, Margaret “Peggy” Denman.
At the hospital, she meets Peggy’s forty-eight-year-old son, Lucas Denman. Daniella feels an immediate and unsettling physical pull toward him.
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Lucas becomes fixated on her almost instantly. He persuades her to walk Peggy’s Labrador, Bippie, and later takes her to dinner.
That same week, he abruptly ends his engagement to Jade Larson and throws her out of their brownstone. When she says she is pregnant, he ignores her.
At his mother’s house, Lucas punches a hole in the kitchen wall and demands $10,000. He threatens Peggy with a silver candlestick until she transfers the money.
While Grant is away at a conference, Lucas intercepts Daniella outside her home and talks his way inside. They have sex on her living room floor.
Daniella is overcome with guilt and orders him out, insisting it was a one-time mistake. Lucas refuses to accept it and calls them soulmates.
To get closer, Lucas joins Grant’s gym and becomes his personal trainer. Grant invites him home for dinner, and Lucas pretends he and Daniella are strangers while secretly touching her.
Lucas organizes a ski weekend in Waterville Valley for the family. He tampers with Grant’s ski bindings, nearly causing a fatal accident on the mountain.
Peggy learns Lucas is pursuing a married woman and fakes a medical emergency to pull him back to Boston. Enraged, he corners her at home, and she flees down the hallway from a knitting needle.
Meanwhile, Lesley falls for a smooth-talking man named Matt, who pushes an aggressive expansion plan that splits the business partners. Jade then confronts Daniella at the shop, and days later her body is found in an alleged overdose.
Peggy had killed Jade with an insulin overdose to remove an obstacle. Lucas then kills Peggy with insulin, and Peggy’s letter later warns Daniella about exactly that.
Lucas impersonates Grant to cancel the Realtor’s open house so the family cannot move. When Daniella travels to Rockport to view houses, he breaks into the Morris home using a stolen key.
Wearing a balaclava and headlamp, he strikes Grant’s head twice with a hammer and ransacks the house to stage a burglary. He also takes Daniella and Grant’s silver-framed wedding photograph.
Grant survives in an induced coma. Lucas later tries to inject insulin into his IV at the ICU, but Grant wakes unexpectedly and Lucas drops the syringes and flees.
At the reading of Peggy’s will, she leaves her entire $2 million Ivy Street house to Daniella. Lucas is bypassed completely.
Daniella finds a hidden letter from Peggy in a knitting bag. It warns her that Lucas is a dangerous sociopath who likely killed Peggy and urges her to sell the house and move far away.
Lucas catches her reading the letter, knocks her unconscious, and imprisons her in his dark basement. He ties her to a wall hook with zip-ties and ropes.
He uses her phone to send fake messages to her family and hospital staff. When Lesley grows suspicious and calls, Lucas holds a loaded gun to Daniella’s head while forcing her to speak on speakerphone.
Daniella works her and Lesley’s childhood distress safe word, “sunflowers,” into the conversation. Lesley understands and alerts the police.
Lucas tries to move Daniella to the trunk of his car. In the garage, she pretends to kiss him, knees him in the groin, slams the trunk onto his head, and runs into the backyard.
Delusional and in agony, Lucas chases her while hallucinating that she is Louise, the eight-year-old sister he pushed to her death years earlier. Daniella climbs into an old wooden treehouse, and he follows, intending to push her off.
In the turret, Daniella fights back, grabs his gun, and shoots him twice. The rotten floor collapses and both fall to the ground.
Daniella survives with a sprained arm, bruises, and a concussion. Lucas is hospitalized under police guard with two broken legs and a gunshot wound.
Grant recovers his memory and recalls Lucas’s eyes and aftershave during the attack. Detective Sandy Briar finds the back door key and the stolen wedding photo in Lucas’s room, with Grant’s head cut out and replaced by Lucas’s face.
Daniella confesses her infidelity to Grant. Grant then admits that, feeling inadequate over his low libido, he had encouraged Lucas at the gym to pursue her so she could get it out of her system.
Forensics confirm that Peggy murdered Jade with insulin, Lucas murdered Peggy with insulin, and Lucas attempted to murder both Grant and Daniella. The couple forgives each other and commits to rebuilding their marriage.
A year later, Daniella and Grant have moved to Rockport with Bippie. Detective Briar calls with one final revelation.
During demolition of Peggy’s old house, workers uncovered the buried skeleton of a four-month-old infant with a broken neck. The birth record names her “Daniella Denman,” Peggy’s secret third child.
That discovery explains why Peggy had formed such an instant, obsessive bond with the woman who stopped to help her on Ivy Street.
Summary by Chapter
Spoiler warning: This section outlines what happens in each of the book’s 31 sections. The novel contains 1 prologue and 30 numbered chapters.
Prologue (THEN): A mother hides a bruise from her children on a hot summer day while her husband reads the paper and tells her not to answer the phone. She answers, hears static, then a scream from the garden. Her eight-year-old daughter Louise is found dead on the grass with a broken neck.
Chapter One: Daniella reminds her husband Grant about their couples counseling session before he leaves for work. Their twin daughters overhear and question the state of the marriage. Cycling to therapy, Daniella interrupts a mugging on Ivy Street, comforts Margaret “Peggy” Denman, and rides with her to the hospital, missing the appointment.
Chapter Two: Lucas Denman learns his mother is in hospital and resents having to care for her Labrador, Bippie. He recalls meeting Daniella and feels an overwhelming attraction. Unable to sleep, he walks the dog past her house at 2 a.m. and texts her the next morning.
Chapter Three: Daniella and Grant attend their rescheduled session with therapist Linda Gibson about their decade-long lack of intimacy. Grant admits he feels hurt but agrees to small daily gestures of affection. Daniella returns to her faux-flower shop, the Silken Stem, where her business partner Lesley mentions a new boyfriend named Matt.
Chapter Four: Daniella walks Bippie and finds Lucas making tea, and their hands brush. Lucas later invites her to dinner as thanks for helping his mother, and she agrees for a Thursday when Grant is busy. After champagne and intense attention, he kisses her against a tree; she flees home in guilt.
Chapter Five: Lucas returns to the brownstone he shares with his fiancée Jade and breaks off the engagement at midnight. He dismisses her tears and her claim that she is pregnant, demands the ring back, and knocks her down with his bag. Back at his mother’s house, he punches the kitchen wall until his knuckles bleed.
Chapter Six: Daniella avoids Lucas while bonding with Peggy over baking and knitting, and Peggy reveals her late husband Jim was abusive. Daniella invites Peggy to Sunday lunch. On Friday, Lucas intercepts Daniella outside her house, carries her groceries inside, and they have sex on the living room floor.
Chapter Seven: Peggy notices the patched wall and Lucas’s volatility. Lucas demands $10,000, grabbing her neck and threatening her with a silver candlestick until she transfers the money. Jade later arrives crying and pregnant; Peggy gives her $5,000 to stay away. Lucas boasts to his mother about sleeping with Daniella.
Chapter Eight: Daniella scrubs herself raw in the shower out of guilt. She tells Lucas she will no longer walk Bippie or see him. At the shop, Lesley introduces Matt, who pitches an aggressive franchising plan Daniella rejects. Jade then confronts Daniella at the shop, accusing her of sleeping with Lucas.
Chapter Nine: Peggy joins Daniella and the twins for Sunday roast. Daniella mentions that Peggy called out the name “Louise” at the hospital, and Peggy confesses her daughter died years ago. The lunch is interrupted by Lucas calling to say Jade has died of an overdose.
Chapter Ten: Peggy asks Daniella to drive her home, and Lucas calls Daniella weeping about a suicide note. Grant returns and advises Daniella to decline Matt’s expansion plan. Grant then says he wants to stop counseling and eventually leave Boston. Daniella attends therapy alone and confesses her attraction to another man.
Chapter Eleven: Grant brings home a new gym partner for dinner, and it is Lucas. Daniella burns her arm in shock. Lucas pretends they have never met but grabs her waist when Grant leaves the room, and he offers to teach the twins to snowboard. Daniella throws up in the bathroom.
Chapter Twelve: Grant plans a snowboarding weekend in Waterville Valley with Lucas and the twins despite Daniella’s objections. Lucas ignores her calls all week, then arrives to drive the family. On the chairlift he whispers to her, then uses a fake emergency call about his mother to leave the trip early.
Chapter Thirteen: Peggy has faked a medical emergency to pull Lucas away from the trip. Lucas bursts in enraged and destroys the sofa cushions. Peggy confronts him about his obsession and offers psychiatric help, then flees down the hallway as he follows with a knitting needle.
Chapter Fourteen: A ski patrol officer notes Grant’s binding appears to have been tampered with, and the family returns home early. Lesley pushes a New York expansion deal involving Matt. Daniella refuses, and Lesley turns bitter, suggesting Daniella sell her half or end the friendship. Daniella decides to stand her ground and move.
Chapter Fifteen: Daniella hires Realtor Andrea Johnson and says goodbye to the twins at Logan Airport. No one attends the open house, and Andrea reports that a man claiming to be Grant cancelled it. Peggy and Lucas then guilt Daniella into flying to Pittsburgh for Jade’s funeral.
Chapter Sixteen: Lucas broods beside Daniella on the flight and at the service. At the Holiday Inn he grabs her in the hallway demanding sex, but a neighboring guest interrupts. Daniella checks out at 5:45 a.m. to fly home early. Lucas, rejected, decides Grant is the obstacle that must be removed.
Chapter Seventeen: Lucas arrives at the Morris house with a balaclava, gloves, and a hammer hidden in his bag. A neighborhood watch call interrupts his first attempt, so he steals the back door key and returns at 1 a.m. He strikes Grant’s head twice with the hammer, ransacks the house, and flees with the couple’s silver wedding photograph.
Chapter Eighteen: Detective Sandy Briar calls Daniella in Rockport to say Grant was attacked and is in an induced coma. Daniella returns to her ransacked home and notices only the wedding photo frame is missing. She books a hotel, orders security cameras, and tells her daughters. She then confronts Lesley and Matt at the shop.
Chapter Nineteen: Detective Briar takes a statement from Lucas, who is furious Grant survived. Lucas steals insulin from his mother’s cabinet and enters the ICU posing as a relative named “Brody Morris.” Grant unexpectedly opens his eyes, Lucas drops two syringes, and a nurse forces him to flee.
Chapter Twenty: Peggy recalls Lucas punching a hole through her bathroom door. He returns home smashing glass after learning Grant survived, and she asks if he tried to kill him. Lucas insults her and admits he would do anything to be with Daniella. Cornered in the kitchen, Peggy runs for the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty-One: Grant wakes from the coma with slurred speech, and doctors expect a full recovery. Lucas calls Daniella weeping to say Peggy has died from complications of the mugging. He begs her to take Bippie or he will send the dog to the pound, and she agrees.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Lucas privately admits he murdered his mother to remove her interference. When Daniella collects Bippie, she firmly rejects him and says she loves her husband. After she leaves, he searches for financial records and is delighted to be wealthy. Attorney Philip Morton then calls about the will.
Chapter Twenty-Three: At the will reading, Peggy leaves her entire $2 million Ivy Street house to Daniella, leaving Lucas only the personal estate. Lucas interprets it as a sign they should live there together. Daniella later finds a hidden letter from Peggy warning that Lucas is dangerous and likely killed her. Lucas catches her reading it, attacks her, and she passes out.
Chapter Twenty-Four: Lucas shops for lingerie, bedding, champagne, and roses to furnish the basement where he has bound Daniella to a mattress. When she wakes tied to a wall hook, he insists they will build a life together. He uses her phone to send fake messages to her family and the hospital.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Imprisoned with zip-tied wrists, Daniella realizes Lucas stole the wedding photo and attacked Grant. She adopts a compliant facade and asks about his past. Lucas describes his father’s extreme abuse, including beatings and being locked in the same basement, and claims Louise died in an accident he was blamed for.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Lesley leaves a voicemail saying she found Bippie barking in the house, visited Grant, and will call police. Lucas forces Daniella at gunpoint to call Lesley back on speakerphone, and Daniella slips their old distress code word, “sunflowers,” into the conversation. Lucas then forces her into the garage; she knees him, slams the car trunk on his head, and escapes.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: In intense pain and delusion, Lucas chases Daniella through the overgrown garden, hallucinating that she is his dead sister Louise. He follows her up the wooden steps of the old backyard treehouse, intending to push her off as he did years before.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Trapped in the turret, Daniella hears Lucas call her “LouLou” and confess his childhood hatred of his sister. She kicks him, he drops the gun, and she fires into his shoulder. The rotten floor collapses and both fall to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Daniella wakes in hospital with a sprained arm and concussion. Lucas is in custody with two broken legs and a gunshot wound. Grant’s memory returns, and police find the stolen wedding photo and back door key in Lucas’s room. Daniella confesses her infidelity, and Grant reveals he had encouraged Lucas at the gym to pursue her.
Chapter Thirty: A year later, Daniella and Grant live in Rockport with Bippie. Lesley travels America after selling the shop, and Daniella plans a real flower shop. Detective Briar reports that demolition of Peggy’s house uncovered the buried skeleton of a four-month-old girl named “Daniella Denman,” Peggy’s secret third child.
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Characters in This Book
| Character | Role |
| Daniella Morris | Fifty-two-year-old English expat in Brookline who co-owns the Silken Stem faux-flower shop and becomes Lucas’s target. |
| Lucas Denman | Peggy’s forty-eight-year-old son, a personal trainer and former property developer who obsesses over Daniella. |
| Dr. Grant Morris | Daniella’s husband of twenty years and an MIT professor. |
| Margaret “Peggy” Denman | Elderly Ivy Street resident who is mugged outside her home. |
| Lesley Rennie | Daniella’s British business partner at the Silken Stem and long-time friend. |
| Arlyse Morris | Daniella and Grant’s older twin daughter, volunteering in Belize. |
| Tasia Morris | Daniella and Grant’s younger twin daughter, studying marine conservation in Costa Rica. |
| Jade Larson | Lucas’s fiancée, who is dumped and later murdered by Peggy. |
| Matt | Lesley’s boyfriend who pushes an unwanted expansion of the Silken Stem. |
| Detective Sandy Briar | Boston Police investigator handling Grant’s attack, Peggy’s death, and Lucas’s crimes. |
| Linda Gibson | Brookline marriage counselor and intimacy specialist. |
| Andrea Johnson | Realtor hired by Daniella to sell the Brookline house. |
| Philip Morton | Peggy’s family attorney who executes her will. |
| Bippie | Peggy’s brown Labrador retriever, later adopted by Daniella. |
| Louise Denman | Lucas’s younger sister, who died at age eight after he pushed her from a treehouse. |
| Infant Daniella Denman | Peggy’s secret third child, found buried in the yard with a broken neck. |
| Jim Denman | Peggy’s deceased abusive husband and Lucas’s father. |
Behind the Facade: What the Novel Examines
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
| Deception and hidden facades | Brookline’s large houses and quiet streets sit above domestic abuse, infidelity, and murder. Peggy’s sweet exterior conceals a past of abuse and lethal action. |
| Infatuation versus love | Lucas describes instant physical fixation and refuses rejection, while Daniella and Grant’s marriage centers on kindness and communication. |
| Guilt and atonement | Daniella’s guilt over one night drives her choices. Grant’s guilt over encouraging Lucas pushes both to confront their marriage. |
| Generational trauma and violence | Jim Denman’s cruelty passes to Lucas’s behavior, and Peggy’s protective instincts turn lethal. The buried infant and Louise’s death extend the pattern back further. |
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Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Psychological Thriller / Domestic Suspense
- Core Narrative Tropes: Stalker nightmare, hidden suburban secrets, dark family curse, kidnapping and confinement, secret distress code
- Tone & Atmosphere: Tense, claustrophobic, dark, paranoid, emotionally intense
- Primary Conflict: Daniella’s struggle to protect her marriage, daughters, and life from Lucas’s escalating obsession after one mistake
- Pacing Style: Fast-paced, alternating first-person viewpoints with frequent cliffhangers and multiple twists
- Book Structure: 31 sections — 1 prologue (“THEN”) and 30 numbered chapters
- ISBN-10: 1837567166
- ISBN-13: 978-1837567164
- Pages: 288
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