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Summary

Fate: Chapters 133–152

It is now 1990, and Saint is picking up Patch from prison after his six-year sentence. He walks with a slight limp, but her shot had gone cleanly through the leg, causing minimal damage. At his trial she testified for him, getting him a shorter sentence and moved to a safer prison. Patch has been writing to Tooms and to the judge, testifying on Tooms’s behalf as he knows his chances of finding Grace will all but disappear when Tooms dies.

Patch goes back to living in his mother’s house, which he’d purchased with the money Misty’s father gave him on prom night. Saint stocks his freezer with home-cooked meals, and Sammy shows up to provide him with drinks and company. One night he helps a drunken Sammy home to his apartment above the art gallery and looks over all the paintings he’s done of the missing girls from the past decade, finding also a stack of mail from desperate parents. 

Back at home, Patch burns everything that reminds him of Grace and remembers the night of the fire at Eli Aaron’s house, when Grace pulled him out and saved his life. Saint returns to Monta Clare and moves with Patch into Norma’s house. Patch goes to work manning the gallery, and one day sees Misty Meyer on Main Street. 

Last summer, Jimmy Walter’s mother told all of Monta Clare about Saint’s abortion and her divorce from Jimmy, publicly shaming her and causing Norma to cease speaking to Saint for the whole season. Saint sits with Chief Nix in the rain and they lament their regrets. Later, Saint uses favors from her job to get a forensic team to the Tooms farmhouse to look for DNA samples in an attempt to track Grace down. Patch comes, and goes into the cellar Saint discovered years ago before Saint can stop him. He tells her the cellar is not the bunker, that he’s never been there before.

Patch goes out with Misty that night to a diner, where he learns that she has dropped out of college, and a year ago her father died. They spend the evening together, catching up, and Patch tells her about his desire to search Thurley State Park for where Tooms claims to have buried Grace. That night they drive to the park, and the next morning begin to walk, Patch following directions that Saint gave him only to grow certain in his belief that Tooms was lying and Grace could still be alive. Summer arrives, and Patch and Misty become friends again, going for hikes and picnics together. Patch learns that the Palace 7 movie theater is showing Grease, Misty’s favorite movie, and asks her to go with him. 

Saint gets called onto a case in another town, where the police dig up the bones of a dead girl buried with the same rosary beads Eli Aaron buries with all of his victims. Saint calls Patch and tells him that she has found the body of Summer Reynolds, one of the missing girls Patch painted. He drives out to meet her, and gives the painting to the girl’s parents.

Patch drives seven hours back to Monta Clare and realizes he’s missed his movie date with Misty. She is not angry, but tells him they need to stop seeing each other. Patch accepts, but glimpses through the window a little girl. He realizes, with a jolt, that Misty had dropped out of college in order to raise a daughter—his daughter—who she has named Charlotte.

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