Opening
On his deathbed, Joe feels peace for the first time since childhood, surrounded by the living and the dead who love him. After he passes, Ruthie carries out his final wishes, returning to Maine to bury his ashes and quietly reclaim the place where their family’s deepest wound began.
What Happens
Chapter 16: Joe
Joe lies with his eyes closed, held in the warmth of his family. He feels Leah’s hand in his, senses the room full of presence—siblings nearby, his deceased father and brother Charlie waiting in the corner. The pain drains away; his body feels suddenly light, like a child’s.
He does not want a life montage. He wants only this moment: the press of hands, breath, grief, love, and the ghosts gathered with the living. In that stillness, he recognizes a happiness he has not felt since the day before Ruthie vanished—before the family’s great loss remade his life. Holding to that single feeling, he lets go.
Chapter 17: Ruthie
Ruthie narrates Joe’s final morning. He smiles at each of them and dies quietly. Leah weeps and kisses his hand. Ruthie and Mae stand steady; Ben keeps watch at the door; their Mother cries from another room. A man who lived with solitude and guilt dies in a room full of company and love.
Honoring his wishes, the family cremates him. They bury half his ashes in Nova Scotia beside Charlie. Ten days later, Ruthie drives with Leah to Maine. At the small cabin Joe once painted—flowers, clouds, waves—Leah pauses, admiring the color and care. They bury the remaining ashes beside the steps he built. Hand in hand with her niece, Ruthie feels something loosen. She begins to lay down her ghosts and step into a new kind of remembering.
Character Development
These chapters complete arcs of responsibility, forgiveness, and inheritance, shifting the story’s center of gravity from Joe’s lifelong burden to Ruthie’s emerging peace.
- Joe: After decades of isolation and guilt, he accepts love and release at the end, finding the atonement he long sought.
- Ruthie: She becomes the family’s protector and memory-keeper, returning to the site of harm to transform it into a place of care and continuity.
- Leah: As daughter and niece, she represents the future; by witnessing the burial and Joe’s art, she helps bridge a history fractured by secrets.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters braid together the novel’s central threads of Family, Loss, and Grief, Guilt and Atonement, and Memory and Trauma. Joe’s death is not framed as tragedy but as a communal rite that binds the living and the dead. Forgiveness has already been granted; love fills the room, and the grief, though heavy, is shared. By returning to Maine, Ruthie chooses to face—not flee—her past, reshaping memory through deliberate acts of care.
- The Berry Fields/Cabin: Once the site of terror, the cabin becomes a sanctuary. Joe’s painted flowers, clouds, and waves literalize a gentler story layered over the old one. Burying his ashes there reclaims the place as a home for memory rather than hurt.
- Ashes: Divided between Nova Scotia and Maine, they unite Joe’s Mi’kmaq roots with the fields where his sorrow began. The split acknowledges both halves of his life and binds the family’s geography into a single ritual map.
Key Quotes
“this just might be the happiest I’ve been since the day the crow stole my bread in a berry field in Maine.”
Joe’s last thought bridges innocence and release. By pairing a playful childhood image with his final peace, the line collapses five decades of burden and suggests that reunion—with family, with self—can return a person to an earlier, unbroken state.
“A quiet death for a quiet man.”
Ruthie’s plainspoken tribute matches Joe’s temperament and the family’s stoic tenderness. The understatement honors the man without spectacle and emphasizes how love, not drama, defines his final moment.
“I began to let go of my ghosts.”
This closing confession signals not erasure but transformation. Ruthie’s ghosts remain part of her, yet the holding changes; the past no longer dictates the shape of her days.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters close Joe’s story in grace and open Ruthie’s in recovery. The family’s rituals—cremation, the twin burials, the return to the painted cabin—turn a landscape of hurt into a site of witness and belonging. The narrative circle tightens: the place that once took a sister now receives a brother with love, and a new generation stands present to see it.