The Lovely Bones

In NYC, Ruth tells nobody about Susie’s murder or her supernatural encounters, and instead keeps “an honor code with her journals and her poems” (248). She spends her time walking around the city, noting in her journal the locations where she feels that a woman or girl died. In heaven, Susie sees that Ruth has become a minor celebrity because of this, as “women lined up to know if she had found where they’d been killed” (251). The day after Lindsey’s graduation, Ruth watches a nanny wake up just in time to catch a little girl before she wanders off. This causes her to have a vision of another girl who wandered into the bushes and disappeared, which she writes down in her journal. Ruth’s father calls her to let her know that the sinkhole has opened, and she decides to make a pilgrimage back home to see it before it closes. The only person she keeps in touch with from Norristown is Ray, whom she sees whenever she visits home, and she plans to take him with her to the sinkhole.

Buckley, now in the seventh grade, has become obsessed with gardening, planting the entire garden with a variety of herbs and vegetables. However, he ignores the advice from his books and plants things too close together. Lynn decides against telling him this, as “she no longer believed in talk” (254). One afternoon, Buckley brings up a box of clothes from the basement to use for staking tomatoes. Jack realizes that they are Susie’s clothes, which Lynn boxed up when she moved into Susie’s room. Jack tells Buckley they need to save those, and Buckley angrily asks him why he can’t use the clothes, accusing Jack of acting like Susie’s was only his. As they argue, Jack has a heart attack. He collapses, telling Buckley, “I’ve loved all three of you” (258).

That night, while Jack is in the hospital, guilt consumes Buckley. He fears that he will lose his father, who is the person he loves the most. It is the second night that Jack has not given Buckley a goodnight kiss, the first was during his hospitalization after receiving the beating in the cornfield. At the hospital, Lindsey and Susie stand on opposite sides of his bed, “both wanting the same thing. To have him to [them]selves forever” (258).

Susie walks until the landmarks of her heaven fade away to nothing but flat earth. She then runs into her grandfather, and the two dance like they did when Susie was 6. When the music stops, Susie’s grandfather tells her that he is going, and that she is so close as well. He then walks away and disappears into nothingness.

Coming into work at the winery, Abigail hears that there is an emergency back home. Abigail phones all the hospitals in the area and eventually learns that Jack had a heart attack. The caretaker drives her to the airport, and she takes the first flight back home. While stopped for a layover, Abigail looks at a Susie’s class photo, which she keeps hidden and upside down in her wallet. She takes the picture out and leaves it by a tiny tree that is struggling to grow. On the final leg of her flight, Abigail sits alone thinking about how she never wanted to be a mother and how she received the punishment of losing Susie because she didn’t want to have the baby.

Lindsey and Samuel meet Abigail at the airport. As Abigail walks towards them, she realizes that Buckley, who refuses to look at her, is there as well. When Abigail says she’ll try to get Buckley in to see Jack—the policy forbids his entrance due to his age—he tells her, “Fuck You” (269). Abigail unsuccessfully tries to hide her crying from the children:

But no amount of tears would sway Buckley. He had been keeping, daily, weekly, yearly, an underground storage room of hate. Deep inside this, the four-year-old sat, his heart flashing. Heart to stone, heart to stone (269).

Arriving at the same hospital Jack was at before, Abigail’s memories of the affair strike her, and she wants to run away again. She works up the courage to go into Jack’s room and cries while holding his hand.

Harvey travels to a small shack in Connecticut where, several years prior, he killed a young waitress. Inside, he finds that the police have dug up the ground, and he goes to sleep inside the empty grave. He dreams a dream he always has when threatened—of Lindsey running away in her soccer jersey: “It had been in the flash of her soccer shirt that his life had begun to spin out of control” (278).

Fenerman has since connected another victim to Harvey, as well as another of his aliases. He has also recovered Susie’s Pennsylvania keystone charm from another murder scene. After hearing from a nurse he dated about Jack’s heart attack, Fenerman resolves to give the charm back to him even though it was against the rules, seeing it “as a talisman that might speed [Jack’s] recovery” (273).

Abigail, not wanting to return home, stays overnight in the hospital, wondering how long she would have to wait until she could leave again. She goes into a diner, where a man gives her a sketchy look: “Everywhere she looked she saw me, and at the booth across from her she saw the man who could have murdered me” (275). Abigail decides that she will spend a few hours with Jack, and when he awakes, she would say her goodbyes and leave again. As Abigail watches him sleep, their past love and memories together overwhelm her, and she falls asleep holding his hand.

Jack awakes with Abigail sleeping, holding his hand. Although he still loves her, he resolves to let Abigail be who she is. Susie, watching, realizes the strength of her father’s unending love and devotion. Abigail wakes up, and Jack invites her to come into his hospital bed with him, which she does. He tells her that he fell in love with her while she was away. Abigail can’t bring herself to say “I Love You” but tells Jack that she will stay for a while. They kiss and both begin crying as they do.