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Summary

The Break: Chapters 172–186

It is 1995; a year has passed since that night in the hotel with Charlotte, and Patch has grown into a devoted father. One day Charlotte asks him to tell her about the missing girls. He does, and she becomes invested in the search. Patch begins painting again, and speaks with the parents of missing girls on the phone instead of jetting off to meet them in person. He paints their portraits and Charlotte sends responses to old letters that he’d been sent from parents. Saint comes for dinner one night, and Charlotte shows her the bulletin board she’s been working on, marking out the missing girls on a map. Charlotte points out Summer Reynolds, and Saint realizes she’s marked the town of Breckenridge as Colorado’s Kingdom, as it was once known.

Saint realizes this is a massive clue, and races to her apartment, going over her own map and the tapes of Patch’s memories of Grace. She begins to understand that Grace’s stories and anecdotes all hint at places where the missing girls’ bodies were being dug up. Each location that Patch remembers Grace mentioning matches up with the location of a girl’s remains buried with Eli Aaron’s rosary beads. She calls Himes to tell him about her discovery.

Patch goes to New York City with Charlotte, Sammy, and Mrs. Meyer to attend a formal showing of his paintings. Saint arrives to show support and Patch confides his feelings of detachment from his own life to her. Later, he goes for dinner alone at an Italian restaurant Grace once told him about. Patch walks alone through the night, returning to the hotel the next morning to find Charlotte holding a copy of The New York Times, an article written about Patch and his work in the Arts section. 

Guided by Patch’s old tapes and her map, Saint arrives at the town of Black Rock, where she finds nuns carrying the same rosary beads that Eli Aaron buries with his victims. She shows Sister Cecile—one of the nuns—a picture of Eli Aaron, and she recognizes him as Robert Peter Frederick, who used to be an altar boy at the church in Black Rock. Saint learns that the rosary beads were traditionally given to people who needed saving, and that Eli Aaron believed abortion and sex outside of marriage to be a sin. She realizes that he has been tracking down girls who have had abortions and murdering them for being sinners. Another nun, Sister Isabelle, sees the beads in Saint’s hands and tells her that someone else, a man, recently bought a set of them this year—proving that Eli Aaron is still alive, and still hunting girls down.

It is Charlotte’s thirteenth birthday, and Patch is spoiling her rotten, agreeing to her every wish and demand. Patch and Sammy take her to the Culpepper Zoo, where Patch has a strange fainting spell, collapsing in the reptile exhibit. He comes to in the zoo’s veterinary office, and realizes that the man tending to him is none other than Jimmy Walters. Patch is dumbstruck, shocked by his appearance and filled with anger on Saint’s behalf. He knows what he’s going to do next, and accepts his fate.

Previous section Fate, continued: Chapters 152–171 Next section The Prisoner: Chapters 187–209

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