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Summary
Chapters 14–16
Chapter 14
Lindsey watches Harvey, much as he watches others. During practice with the soccer team, she stares at his house. Inside, Harvey sees her and feels crowded, an experience he has had before with other victims’ families. Then, on November 26, 1974, Lindsey breaks into Harvey’s house as Susie watches from heaven. The similarities between the Harvey and Salmon houses slow Lindsey’s search, and Susie summons Harvey’s other victims to assist her.
Upstairs, Lindsey enters Harvey’s bedroom and finds a sketchbook with drawings of a structure in the cornfield—the hole where Susie was killed. Lindsey hears Harvey returning home and rips out the page. Harvey is alerted to someone’s presence in the house when a floorboard creaks. He dashes upstairs and sees Lindsey escape through the upstairs window. Back at home, Lindsey admits to her father what she has done. She gives her father the drawing and they acknowledge its implications, but Abigail refuses to look at it. Lindsey confesses that Harvey saw her.
Susie feels profound relief, both that her sister wasn’t harmed and that she didn’t lose the connection to Earth that Lindsey provides her. Franny gives Susie a map, telling her to use it when she feels ready. It directs her to a field where she finds a girl, another one of Harvey’s victims. Susie cries as they meet and share their stories. Soon, all of Harvey’s victims gather and comfort one another.
Chapter 15
Susie is able to see past as well as current events. She observes a young Harvey and his mother enjoying the thrill of stealing. They easily get away with it the first time, but, as it becomes more difficult, Harvey finds himself tasked with carrying the stolen items. His mother also teaches him to rob graves, telling him to look past the dead. One night, as they sleep in their truck, three men wake them, leering through the windows. They narrowly escape and Harvey learns there is nothing worse than to be a woman or a child. In the novel’s present, Harvey watches Lindsey run away from his house. After retracing her path and hiding his trophy bag, Harvey calls the police.
Jack also calls the police and learns that two officers are on their way to Harvey’s house to investigate the break-in. The police arrive to find Harvey crying. He welcomes them in to search his home but declines to press charges against Lindsey. They remind him what Jack told them: that Lindsey had taken a drawing of the structure in the cornfield from his house, but they are satisfied with Harvey’s responses.
Susie doubts Harvey will be captured and worries her family will disintegrate. Abigail takes Buckley to a mall and lets him on the playground without her. There, she sees Len and follows him into the mall’s interior. At the same time that the two officers leave Harvey’s house, Len kisses Abigail, which helps her to move away from her family and her grief. While this illicit passion intensifies, elsewhere, Samuel kisses Lindsey, Buckley plays with a young girl, Grandma Lynn drinks shots, Jack waits by the phone, and Harvey leaves Norristown with his belongings packed.
Chapter 16
A year has passed since Susie’s murder. Ruana is stretching when Ruth arrives at her home. Ruth and Ray have been experimenting sexually for practice, although Ray has come to enjoy it. He is dancing in his room when Ruth enters and tells him that she’s going to the cornfield. First, though, they make out on his bed and Ruth starts to feel something.
When Ruth and Ray arrive at the cornfield, they find that people have gathered spontaneously, moved to mark the anniversary of Susie’s death. Even as more people gather, no one calls the Salmons. Lindsey hears singing coming from the cornfield and notes that there’s something going on for Susie. Abigail is uninterested, saying that she wants to be more than a mother. When Lindsey asks if she’s going to leave, Abigail remains quiet.
Jack, Lindsey, and Buckley join the circle of people in the cornfield. Susie notes that they are standing near where she died.
Analysis
Harvey has long watched others with impunity, but in these chapters, he finally understands what it means to be hunted. He stalked his victims without their knowledge, but he is fully aware of Lindsey’s intent but is nonetheless unable to prevent her from stealing his drawing. That he dreams of Lindsey’s soccer jersey whenever he feels threatened indicates how much her intrusion has frightened him. To maintain his social mask, he must decline to prosecute, but she has driven him out of Norristown. In this section, as earlier in the novel, a subtle parallel is established between Harvey and Lindsey. When he was a child, Harvey and his mother stole things. Lindsey too has stolen something, with a parent’s tacit approval. However, where Harvey’s mother teaches him to “look past” the dead, Lindsey acts in defense of her dead sister. By stealing from Harvey, Lindsey also drives him away from his home and her community.
While the connections with Harvey are subtle, the comparisons between Lindsey and Susie remain more overt. When Lindsey feels pressure to find something that Jack can use against Harvey, Susie recognizes this as an ongoing form of competition between the siblings. But their bond exceeds mere rivalry. When Lindsey is endangered, Susie recognizes how much she needs Lindsey, both as a way to experience life on Earth and as a sister. To protect Lindsey, she calls for help in heaven, a notable shift from her relatively isolated posture of watching. In recognition of the maturity that both this insight and the call for help reflect, Franny gives Susie a map to find Harvey’s other victims. In community, Susie finds care and comfort. Lindsey, too, finds personal satisfaction in her success and in her choice to act. For her, breaking into Harvey’s house represents growth, as she continues to show brave, bold, and decisive qualities.
A community like the one Susie finds with Harvey’s other victims in heaven also assembles on Earth when people spontaneously gather to remember Susie. Unlike the official memorial service, this one happens because people are moved to go to the cornfield and remember. The emotional scene stresses how important community becomes in the wake of a tragedy. When the wounds were raw, the family had chafed under the solicitude of their neighborhood, but a year later this same community concern is a salve, providing a way for everyone to be together. Because the gathering does not center the Salmons (although Jack, Lindsey, and Buckley eventually join), the scene stresses that Susie’s murder has affected the community in important, if largely unexamined, ways.
At the same time, this memorial is a turning point in the action of the novel. Harvey has left town and Abigail is about to do the same. The murder is likely to remain unsolved, given that there are few clues, no body, and the main suspect has disappeared. At the end of Chapter 15, the simultaneity of actions by Len and Abigail, Samuel, Buckley, Lynn, Jack, and Harvey occurs from Susie’s perspective in heaven, although nothing is revealed about Susie’s own actions. This surprising exclusion recalls Susie’s initial attempts at watching Earth less intensely, knowing that the likely outcome of these events will be that Harvey escapes justice and her family falls apart.
