Opening
In the wake of a brutal assault by David Bateman, six-year-old Samuel 'Sam' Hill confronts pain, shame, and the limits of protection from his mother, Madeline Hill, and father, Maxwell Hill. A tense reckoning at the rectory exposes the truth, shatters illusions about the adults in power, and removes David from school—but not from Sam’s life. The narrative then jumps to 1989, where Sam, now an ophthalmologist, collides with the past in the form of David’s injured daughter, and the old cycle of harm threatens to repeat.
What Happens
Chapter 31: The Emergency Room
Madeline drives a battered Sam to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital while his friend Ernie Cantwell sits stricken with guilt in the backseat. Humiliation, not anger, overwhelms Sam; he cannot bear having been seen so helpless. In triage, a nurse and doctor catalog his injuries and ask what happened.
Sam lies—“I fell off my bike”—and refuses to break. Behind the lie sits a hard new truth: his parents’ love cannot always shield him from cruelty, and his mother’s God does not intervene. Doubt cracks open his childhood certainty, pulling him toward Faith and Doubt. As he leaves, a nurse who seems to understand whispers a single rule for safety and intimacy: tell the truth to those who love you.
Chapter 32: The Silent Ride Home
The car home is a hush of unsaid things. Mrs. Cantwell apologizes—Ernie wasn’t even supposed to be out—but Madeline stays composed and distant. The boys don’t speak. As the Hills pull away, Ernie’s small, hesitant wave meets no reply. The quiet between them becomes another bruise: their friendship absorbs the shock of violence and silence at once.
Chapter 33: A Father’s Fury
At home, Madeline soothes Sam with ice cream and gentle questions he refuses to answer. He escapes into fantasies of disguise and vengeance from The Count of Monte Cristo, then makes one last desperate prayer for different eyes—eyes that might let him pass unnoticed. Later, he hears his mother sob through a Hail Mary and understands the cost of his pain to her.
Max comes home, sees the brand-new bicycle ruined, and erupts, hurling it onto the lawn. Terrified, Sam pretends to sleep until Max panics, thinking his son has a concussion. When Sam admits he was afraid of being yelled at, Max’s anger dissolves: the bike means nothing. He suggests karate or boxing so Sam can defend himself—a pragmatic counterpoint to prayer. Then the phone rings. Father Brogan, the OLM pastor, summons the family to the rectory that evening.
Chapter 34: The Reckoning
Around a table at the rectory sit the Hills, David and his parents, a pale Sister Beatrice, and Father Brogan. Sam clings to the bike story; David, ice-cool, denies everything. Father Brogan breaks the stalemate by speaking from his own childhood with bullies—praising Sam’s endurance and labeling David a liar and coward.
He then reveals signed statements from the other boys who confess the attack and describe its viciousness. On the spot, Father Brogan expels David from Our Lady of Mercy. Mr. Bateman explodes, slaps his son, and drags him out, promising a beating. David’s cry—“You’re hurting me again”—exposes a pattern that explains his cruelty without excusing it. Afterward, Father Brogan apologizes to the Hills and offers Sam an Irish blessing card. On his way out, Sam sees Sister Beatrice sneak a drink from a flask and receive a cold, warning glance—proof that David’s exile won’t end Sam’s troubles at school.
Chapter 35: 1989, Burlingame, California
The narrative jumps forward. Sam, now a successful ophthalmologist who wears brown contacts to hide his red eyes, treats Daniela, a young girl with a severe eye injury. Her mother, Trina Crouch, freezes when Sam mentions he knew her ex-husband: David Bateman. She recognizes him as “the kid with the red eyes.”
Sam reveals privately that he abandoned faith after Max’s debilitating stroke—he could not accept it as “God’s will.” Examining Daniela, he doubts the official story of a bike accident. The trauma doesn’t match. He gently probes; Trina bristles and insists the report is accurate before storming out with her daughter. Sam is left with a chilling certainty: the violence that shaped him now threatens David’s child.
Character Development
These chapters reforge identities under pressure, peeling back facades at home, at school, and in the Church.
- Sam Hill: Shame and secrecy mark a shift from innocence to strategy. His lie becomes both shield and burden, a first grown-up compromise in his Coming of Age. As an adult, he is clinically precise and deeply compassionate, yet spiritually estranged—his science replaces the certainty he once borrowed from prayer.
- Maxwell Hill: The outburst over the bike exposes raw fear; his instant remorse and practical solution (self-defense lessons) reveal durable Parental Love and Sacrifice grounded in action more than doctrine.
- David Bateman: Unmasked as both predator and prey, he becomes the conduit of a family’s brutality, his “again” reframing his schoolyard violence as learned behavior in a house ruled by fear.
- Father Brogan: A moral counterweight who pairs compassion with consequences. He names the harm, protects the vulnerable, and acts decisively where others equivocate.
- Sister Beatrice: Her hidden flask punctures her authority. The chill in her gaze warns that power, not justice, shapes her choices.
Themes & Symbols
Violence ripples across generations, and institutions either confront it or enable it. The rectory scene publicly resolves one strand of Bullying and Its Lasting Impact, but the 1989 timeline shows how harm metastasizes: the lie of the “bike accident” repeats with Daniela, turning Sam’s childhood cover story into an adult diagnostic tell. Removal from school cannot excise what a family normalizes.
Faith and Doubt fractures in stages. Sam’s ER lie signals a new allegiance to self-preservation over piety; Max’s pivot to boxing lessons grounds protection in human agency; later, Max’s stroke completes Sam’s break with belief. The symbols cluster around this split: the ruined bicycle—freedom shattered and innocence dented; the Irish blessing—faith’s promise without its proof; Sister Beatrice’s flask—authority corroded from within.
Key Quotes
“I fell off my bike.”
A child’s lie becomes a survival tactic and a template. In the present, it shields Sam from exposure; in 1989, the same claim flags abuse for a doctor who recognizes the pattern because he invented it.
“Never be afraid to tell the truth, Sam. Not to the people who love you.”
The nurse offers an ethic of intimacy that contrasts with institutional silence and Sam’s secrecy. The line becomes a quiet counterweight to the fear that controls him—and a measure by which later adults, like Trina, are judged.
“You’re hurting me again.”
David’s cry reframes his cruelty as mimicry of a violent home. The word “again” widens the scene from punishment to history, complicating blame while intensifying urgency to break the cycle.
“God’s will.”
The phrase, invoked around Max’s stroke, marks the fault line of Sam’s lost belief. It reduces catastrophe to doctrine, and Sam refuses it, choosing medicine and control over surrender to mystery.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters close one battle and open a war. David’s expulsion satisfies a need for justice yet exposes deeper wounds: an abusive father, a compromised nun, and a community where truth relies on the brave, not the powerful. The time jump binds past to present, transforming backstory into active pressure on Sam’s adult life. As physician and survivor, he alone recognizes the recycled lie and stands at the edge of intervention. The novel’s dual-timeline engine begins in earnest here, driving questions of responsibility: Who breaks the cycle of harm when institutions hesitate—and what must be risked to do it?