Previous Next

Summary

The Broken Hearts: Chapters 86–97

It is 1978, and Patch and Misty have been dating since the night of her birthday party. Patch left school at sixteen and is now working long hours as a miner. Misty joins Patch as he spends the winter driving around the state, meeting the parents of missing girls in a fruitless search for Grace. Patch splits his time between this search, taking care of his incapacitated mother, dating Misty, and spending time with Sammy. He begins painting skillful portraits of the missing girls from photographs given to him by their parents and shipping the finished product to the parents. 

Patch paints a picture of Grace’s childhood home from the description she once gave him, and considers trying to go to art school until Sammy tells him not to. His relationship with Misty continues, but he doesn’t expect it to last, feeling as though he doesn’t belong in her rich world and also wanting nothing more than to single-mindedly continue his search for Grace.  

Saint gets into Dartmouth, works at the public library, and spends most of her free time searching for Eli Aaron. She gives up spying on Tooms after a year, but continues to let Patch leave long messages about what he remembers of his time with Grace on her answering machine. Although she remains an outsider at school (even more so without Patch as her best friend), Jimmy Walters begins repeatedly asking her to senior prom.

Sammy puts on an art show at Monta Clare Fine Art of Patch’s paintings, though Patch refuses to sell any of them. Saint places countless calls to newspapers about the show in order to spread the news. At the show, Saint convinces Patch to let Sammy sell some of the paintings, and she buys the one of Grace’s childhood home. 

Norma talks Saint into going to prom with Jimmy Walters in hopes that the boy will help Saint move on from Patch. Saint runs into Ivy Macauley in the drugstore, where she discovers that Dr. Tooms has been prescribing her painkillers and sleeping pills since the day after Patch was taken.

On the evening of prom, Patch waits with Mr. Meyer for Misty to finish getting ready. Mr. Meyer tells him that Misty is thinking of not going to college in order to stay with Patch. He makes it clear to Patch that it is his wish for Patch to break up with Misty so that she will go to college, and once Patch agrees to do so, he gives the boy a check. 

While she is waiting for Jimmy to pick her up to go to prom, Saint sneaks into the Tooms farmhouse. She thinks she hears a noise above and begins climbing the stairs to the attic, only to be discovered and caught by Chief Nix. Nix tries to contain her, but she struggles against him, intent on searching the house until she breaks down crying, overwhelmed by the emotion of the past few years. Nix comforts her as Harkness, another police officer, pulls up. Saint begs them to search the house again; Nix refuses, but Harkness begins shifting around a woodpile until Nix reminds him they don’t have a search warrant. They get in the police cars and Nix offers to drive Saint to the prom, but she refuses and runs back to the woodpile, tearing it apart. Beneath the wood she finds a bunker, in which there is a mattress and a lot of dried blood. 

Patch and Misty return from prom, where Patch begins to break up with her. He tells her he never loved her back, and she hits him and tells him that Grace isn’t real. Her parents come out to pull her away from him, and Patch walks home. 

Previous section The Painter, continued: Chapters 69–85 Next section Cops and Robbers: Chapters 98–116

Take a Study Break