Opening
A fragile thaw forms between Blythe Connor and Violet Connor, only to splinter into accusation, doubt, and self-erasure. Across these chapters, a stolen blade, a weaponized question about bleach, and a single phone call from Gemma dismantle Blythe’s last certainty about [Sam Connor]’s(/books/the-push/sam-connor) death. By the time Blythe returns to the intersection, even memory refuses to hold.
What Happens
Chapter 76: A Glimmer of Hope
Violet calls Blythe to ask for a weekend together. Blythe drops everything, aching over the small parts of Violet’s life she has missed—the sparkly leggings in the overnight bag, the awkward quiet that feels less barbed than before. They see a movie, eat ice cream, laugh once in the car—a bright, bewildering moment that presses on everything they’ve lost.
That night Blythe sits at the end of Violet’s bed like she used to, resting a hand on her feet; Violet doesn’t pull away. When Violet says her grandmother, Cecilia, misses Blythe, Blythe’s mind moves to Sam and wonders if Violet is thinking of him too. Violet declines the offer to talk. Later, Blythe hears soft footsteps, a dresser drawer open and shut, then silence. She waits, checks the drawer, and sees the bus-stop bracelet still there. The visit ends pleasantly—until Blythe watches Gemma rush to greet Violet at the door and decides, with a new chill, to start watching their house at night.
Chapter 77: “Aren’t We Lucky”
Flashback. After meeting Fox Connor, Blythe pulls away from her father, stops confiding, even hides when she sees him lingering outside her dorm. After graduation, with months of silence between them, she shows up unannounced. Over whiskey, she finally asks the question that has haunted her: “Why did she leave me?”
He describes the days after her birth—his joy, looking at her and telling her mother, Etta, “Aren’t we lucky.” He adds, “But she couldn’t see—” and then stops, leaves the table. It is their last conversation. Four months later, a heart attack takes him. Wracked with guilt, Blythe believes she and her mother broke his heart. With Mrs. Ellington’s help, she empties the house and sells it fast, eager to sever herself from the past.
Chapter 78: The Blade
Three days after the visit, Gemma calls, furious. She found Jet playing with a razor-sharp blade from a modeling kit and says Violet told her Blythe keeps Fox’s tools unsecured in the basement. Blythe knows that’s false. In a cold flash of recognition, she realizes Violet must have taken the blade from her dresser in the night.
Gemma’s tone has shifted from pity to distrust. After the call, Blythe checks the drawer: the scarf she used to hide the blade is there, but the blade is gone. Violet’s story now stands in Gemma’s mind as truth; Blythe’s reality shrinks.
Chapter 79: “You’ve Made It Up”
Insomnia and nightmare images of Sam mutilated consume Blythe. Violet visits again; the warmth is gone. In the laundry room, Violet points to bleach: “That means someone could die if they drank even a bit of it, right?” Panic crashes over Blythe.
She calls Gemma, lays out everything—the missing blade, the bleach question, her terror for Jet—and begs her to see Violet as a danger. After a long silence comes the final cut: “She didn’t push Sam, Blythe. I know you believe she did. But you’ve made it up. You saw something happen that never did.” The call ends. Numb, Blythe reaches for a body instead of comfort, initiating rough, detached sex on the kitchen table, a gesture of emptiness rather than connection.
Chapter 80: The Intersection
Months pass. Gemma’s words erode Blythe’s certainty. She drives to the intersection where Sam died. The neighborhood has changed; her memory feels slippery. She sets a tube of lip balm where the stroller was; it rolls off the curb into the street, proof that an accident is possible.
Inside the renovated coffee shop, the owner, Joe, still works there. He is kind, remembers her shock, and adds a detail that jars: he says Violet “clung to your waist and wanted to be held.” When Blythe asks if he saw the stroller enter the road, he deflects—“a terrible, freak accident”—and says he’s always thanked God she had her daughter to live for. The implication that Violet sought comfort shatters what remains of Blythe’s conviction. She goes home and collapses, grieving Sam and the life that dissolved around him.
Character Development
Blythe’s grasp on truth falters as external doubt becomes internal voice. Violet tightens her control of the narrative while presenting innocence to everyone else. Gemma emerges as the articulate face of Blythe’s worst fear.
- Blythe Connor: Brief hope with Violet gives way to isolation, paranoia, and self-doubt. The intersection test and Joe’s account crack her core belief about Sam’s death.
- Violet Connor: Calculated, controlled, and persuasive. She steals the blade, frames Blythe, and weaponizes “innocent” questions to induce fear, all while appearing credible.
- Gemma: Shifts from tentative ally to decisive antagonist. She believes Violet and declares Blythe’s version a fabrication, cutting off Blythe’s last line of support.
- Blythe’s Father: A loving, lonely man whose unfinished sentence—“she couldn’t see”—and sudden death deepen the novel’s portrait of inherited hurt and being unseen.
Themes & Symbols
The novel’s exploration of Perception, Reality, and Gaslighting crests here. Gemma’s calm insistence that Blythe “made it up” reframes a mother’s certainty as delusion, and Blythe internalizes the accusation. Her lip-balm experiment is a rational test against an emotional wound—proof chasing meaning—and it fails to settle anything, amplifying the dissonance between what is seen, said, and believed.
Nature vs. Nurture and Generational Trauma threads through the flashback. The father’s “Aren’t we lucky” versus Etta’s inability to “see” Blythe echoes Blythe’s struggle to see and be seen by Violet. The pattern of misrecognition and abandonment persists across generations.
- The Intersection: A mutable stage for memory. Its physical changes mirror Blythe’s shifting perception; the rolled lip balm is plausible but inconclusive.
- The Blade and the Bleach: Ordinary objects recast as latent threats. They embody Blythe’s fear that danger lives inside the home and wears a child’s face.
Key Quotes
“Why did she leave me?” Blythe’s question to her father exposes the primal wound driving her motherhood. It links past abandonment to her desperate need for a coherent story about Violet and Sam.
“Aren’t we lucky. But she couldn’t see—” The father’s unfinished thought suggests Etta’s blindness to her child’s worth. The cutoff line becomes a generational echo: love present but not perceived, and damage passing forward.
“That means someone could die if they drank even a bit of it, right?” Violet’s feigned curiosity about bleach is a controlled provocation. It confirms her awareness of Blythe’s terror and her willingness to stoke it while maintaining plausible innocence.
“She didn’t push Sam, Blythe… You’ve made it up.” Gemma’s verdict is pure gaslighting: definitive, calm, and annihilating. It replaces Blythe’s memory with a sanctioned narrative and isolates her socially and psychologically.
Joe said Violet “clung to your waist and wanted to be held.” This detail contradicts the established dynamic, destabilizing both Blythe’s memory and the reader’s trust in the narrator. It opens the central uncertainty: witness truth versus trauma-filtered recollection.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters mark the psychological pivot of the novel. Blythe’s single sustaining belief—that Violet pushed Sam—collapses under pressure from Gemma’s certainty and Joe’s gentleness. The conflict turns inward: not mother versus daughter, but mother versus memory.
Stripped of allies and conviction, Blythe stands alone with grief and doubt. The narrative asks whether truth can be known when trauma warps perception and love disguises harm. This uncertainty primes the final act with high-stakes ambiguity: if memory fails, what—if anything—can save the living from the past?