Marion

Marion, Rebecca's mother, died of cancer months before Rebecca and Tom go to Paris. She still has a profound influence, however, on her daughter. Rebecca seems to feel pressure to live an exciting, adventurous life that her mother could not have. When Rebecca buys the devil postcard and muses about how Marion would respond, she suggests that her mother had lived vicariously through Rebecca's chronicles of her travels. Twice during her stay in Paris, she declares, “poor Marion,” expressing sorrow over her mother's lack of fulfillment. Yet she seems also to resent Marion's influence on her life when she cannot admit to Tom that she would have chosen her as a mother. Perhaps she blames her mother for her inability to find her own satisfaction in one place.

Rebecca

Rebecca, Tom's wife and Marion's daughter, is probably in her mid-thirties and feeling her biological clock ticking. Hesitant until...