Later

62 pages • 2 hours read

Later

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 10

Chapters 11-20

Chapters 21-30

Chapters 31-40

Chapters 41-50

Chapters 51-60

Chapters 61-69

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 21-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 21 Summary

The first bomb set by the man who calls himself “Thumper” (first mentioned in Chapter 10) went off at a King Kullen Supermarket in 1996. Over the course of his career, he injured roughly 50 people, but no one was killed until the 19th bomb. After each bombing, he sent the police a note threatening more attacks to come. After the nineteenth bomb, he set bigger bombs, wounding 20 and killing 3.

After 17 years, the police finally identified Kenneth Therriault as the probable bomber—but when they raided his apartment, he was gone. They found him on a park bench, dead by suicide, with a note saying he set one more bomb, the biggest yet.

Confronting the certainty of more deaths, Jamie is unable to refuse Liz—even though he knows she only cares about saving her dying career (as her bosses and coworkers suspect that she’s been dealing drugs).

Chapters 22 Summary

Jamie wants to save lives, but also feels sympathy for Liz, who is struggling to save herself. They go to several places where they think Therriault might be hanging around. Jamie is struck by how smoothly Liz lies to get them into certain places. At the hospital where Therriault worked as an orderly, one of his coworkers remarks on how strange it is that they all worked with him for years and never knew the truth about him. Liz agrees that he was good at hiding his true self. Jamie doesn’t say aloud that it takes one to know one.

As they strike out again and again, Jamie continues to feel sympathy for Liz in spite of the way she half-abducted him. She looks thin, tired, and beaten down. Jamie sees her as a lone-wolf hero determined to save the day.

Chapter 23 Summary

There are too many cops at Therriault’s apartment building for Jamie and Liz to get close, but a block away, Jamie spots Therriault seated on a bench outside a grocery.

Chapter 24 Summary

Therriault is a grotesque sight: He has a bullet wound on one side of his head, and the other side is blown out with chunks of bone and brain showing. The people going in and out of the grocery store unconsciously avoid getting close to Therriault, and when a woman passes by with a baby, the baby looks at Therriault and starts to cry.

Jamie doesn’t want to get out of the car and talk to him, but Liz cajoles and pressures him until he forces himself to do what he has to. Still, he takes Liz’s hand.

Jamie and Liz approach Therriault, and Jamie asks him where his last bomb is. In the past, the dead have always answered Jamie’s questions, but Therriault resists, saying he doesn’t want to tell. When Therriault speaks, his lips don’t match his words. Adult Jamie thinks this is when the “deadlight demon” possessed Therriault.

Young Jamie asks again, more forcefully, and Therriault writhes as if he is in pain. Jamie continues pressing, until Therriault admits that the bomb is in the same King Kullen Supermarket where he set his first one. Jamie asks why, and Therriault says it felt right to come full-circle. Jamie wants to know why Therriault did any of it, and Therriault answers that he just felt like it.

Chapter 25 Summary

Jamie reports to Liz what Therriault said, and she sends him back to her car to wait for her. At the car, he turns around to see if Therriault is still looking at him. Therriault raises a hand and summons Jamie with a crooked finger. Jamie doesn’t want to go back, but can’t seem to stop himself. Therriault tells Jamie that Liz doesn’t care about him. Jamie replies that he and Liz are saving lives; Therriault grins at him.

Liz emerges from the grocery store with a new burner phone. She uses it to tell an informant to call her and give her a “tip” that Thumper put his last bomb in the King Kullen Supermarket. Jamie notices that Therriault left his seat on the bench. Liz’s informant calls her on her regular phone, and “gives” her the tip she fed to him. When she’s done, she tells Jamie to go back to the car. When he turns to do so, he sees Therriault standing close enough to touch him.

Chapter 26 Summary

After Liz shares her “tip” with the department, Jamie asks her to take him home. Liz asks him if he’s going to tell his mother what they did. Jamie says he doesn’t know, but Liz says she doesn’t care if he does, because nobody would believe him anyway.

Chapter 27 Summary

Tia is distracted with worry when Jamie comes home, and scolds him for not calling her. Then, she asks if Liz had something to do with it. Jamie replies that he had to go with Liz.

Chapter 28 Summary

Jamie tells his mother what happened, explaining that he went with Liz because there were lives at stake. However, he omits Therriault’s unusual lingering. Jamie doesn’t know if dead people can grab anything, but doesn’t want to find out.

The evening news reports that Kenneth Therriault’s bomb was found. Tia calls Liz and yells at her to stay away from Jamie, or she will expose Liz’s drug dealing. Afterward, she tells Jamie that if he ever sees Liz, he should run and tell her.

Chapter 29 Summary

The cops find and defuse Therriault’s last bomb—16 sticks of dynamite attached to a ceiling girder with a bungee cord. Tia tells Jamie that he did a good thing by helping Liz, and Liz did the right thing too, regardless of her motive. Then, she asks Jamie if they can put everything behind them. Jamie knows she means him talking to the dead, and agrees. That night, he sees Therriault.

Chapter 30 Summary

Jamie is almost asleep when he is startled awake by the sound of cats yelling. Looking out the window, he sees Therriault across the street. Therriault beckons to him. Frightened, Jamie pulls the blind and goes back to bed, reassuring himself that the dead fade away after a few days at most.

Chapters 21-30 Analysis

Jamie’s first exposure to Therriault comes when he is 13 years old—the age at which a boy, in many cultures, becomes a man. He takes his first step toward manhood by making the conscious choice to confront Therriault in order to save his potential victims. This is his first step outside the protective circle of his mother’s world. By taking this step, Jamie exposes himself to the perils of manhood, one of which is the potential to be destroyed by your own power.

Until now, Jamie’s ability to speak to the dead has been an innocent talent used for benign reasons—like finding Mona Burkett’s rings and transcribing Regis Thomas’s final book. He’s always dealt with ordinary, well-meaning people. Therriault is Jamie’s first exposure to evil.

Adulthood comes with demons—fear, grief, shame, and pain. Often, the seeds of these demons are planted in childhood, and they are bound to us the way Therriault is bound to Jamie. After taking his symbolic step toward manhood, Jamie can’t take it back.

Part of the cynicism of the hard-boiled detective is his resignation to human fallibility. He’s experienced too much to be surprised or taken aback by anything, so he can look at all but the most sordid characters without condemnation. The adult Jamie looks unflinchingly at Liz’s self-destruction. At the same time, he doesn’t condemn her as evil. He’s learned that truth can be negotiable, and however warped Liz becomes, there is a part of her that still wants to be a good person. She wants redemption; she just doesn’t want it badly enough to work for it in an honest way.

Jamie observes that Liz is abusing him by forcing him to deal with Therriault. Everything Liz has done to manipulate Jamie—eliciting sympathy, slowly crossing boundaries, and persuading Jamie that what she’s doing is acceptable—inevitably leads to abuse. Regardless of whether or not Liz intended to harm Jamie, her easy manipulation hints at her being an abuser by nature. Despite the fact that Liz is abusing him, Jamie takes her hand for support as if she were his mother. Part of him still considers Liz family, and this warmth is what she preys upon.

Jamie allows himself to be manipulated because his goal is to save lives. This is chivalric, but Jamie is ultimately rationalizing Liz and taking some degree of responsibility for her actions. Even when he returns home and is scolded by his mother, Jamie takes responsibility for Liz’s actions by telling Tia that he had to go with Liz.

Jamie has both child-like and adult motives. On one hand, Jamie acknowledges that he could have refused to cooperate with Liz on the grounds that he is a child and has to obey his mother. He ultimately went with Liz because he wants to save lives. Even Tia validates that Jamie used his talent for good. The question is whether or not this choice resulted in a worthwhile trade. Jamie saved an unknown number of lives, and in exchange, he is now haunted by a demon.

When Tia asks Jamie to put his talking to the dead behind them, she is essentially saying she doesn’t want to deal with it. She’s giving in to the hope that Jamie’s ability will cease to be if it isn’t acknowledged—like a child pulling a blanket over their head to keep “monsters” away. Upon seeing Therriault outside his window, Jamie knows his “blanket” doesn’t work, but doesn’t want to distress his mother or go back on his promise.

Symbolically, Tia is a generally good mother pushing her fledgling out of the nest. She still shelters Jamie, but he takes his first step toward manhood on his own (with a little push from his “wicked stepmother”); Jamie is now beyond Tia’s protection.