Previous Next

Summary

Myths and Legends: Chapters 254–261

It is 2001. Sammy and Mrs. Meyer are officially together. After their morning coffee, Sammy goes to visit the Tooms farmhouse, where Tooms is tidying the land before its upcoming auction; he has been working at a timber yard and volunteering at Thurley State Park on the weekends. Sammy hands him an envelope, saying that someone left a valuable painting for Tooms. Patch has gifted his portrait of Callie Montrose to Tooms, and Sammy is offering to buy it off of Tooms in exchange for enough money for Tooms to buy back his own land and home. Sammy offered the same deal to Grace, to whom Patch gave Grace Number One.

Saint has been writing letters to someone, and is now writing her last one before packing it with the rest. She writes that she and Charlotte have reconciled, and that Charlotte is becoming a solid young woman; her grades are good, she’s growing into a fine artist, and she’s going to college in Boston in the fall to study law. Saint is driving to Madison County with a box of gifts, photographs, newspaper clippings, and letters. She pulls up to a farmhouse and is greeted by Candice Addis. It is revealed that Saint never aborted the child she conceived with Jimmy; she gave birth to a son, Theodore, who was adopted by Candice and Nicholas Addis. They’ve brought him up on their farm, and he is a strong, healthy teenager. Saint is a mixture of joyful and sad; she gives the box of gifts and letter to Candice, who holds her while she cries, and then sets off without meeting her son. 

Sammy holds a showing of Charlotte’s art, landscape paintings of places in Monta Clare, almost every one of them bought by a mysterious telephone bidder. Saint has received the FBI Medal for Meritorious Achievement for her work on the Eli Aaron case. The art show is a success, and Saint and Charlotte return home together to see a package for Charlotte on the porch. Charlotte opens the package and finds two jars of the purple honey that Saint and Patch once dreamed of finding as children. 

Saint and Charlotte go on a road trip two weeks before Charlotte is to begin college. They stop at many places, but their final destination is North Carolina, the location written on the label of the purple honey. They begin to see Outer Banks bumper stickers with a skull and crossbones. Charlotte asks someone with the bumper sticker what it means, and the man tells her that the pirate Edward Teach famously hid in Outer Banks. 

Saint and Charlotte arrive at Outer Banks, where they wait by the water. They are about to abandon hope when Patch appears at last, sailing in on a small boat, jumping off and running to Charlotte. They spend that night on Patch’s boat. Charlotte sleeps while Patch and Saint talk; he tells her he’s been painting, that he returns to the shore at every sunset to look for Saint and Charlotte, and that Grace sends him long letters. Saint tells him about Theodore. Afterwards, he takes her below the deck to his cabin, and shows her his newest painting: a picture of the two of them at thirteen, lying together beneath the stars. 

Read more about the significance of the letters Grace sends to Patch.

Previous section The Prisoner, continued: Chapters 234–253 Next section Full Book Summary

Take a Study Break