The Last Thing He Told Me

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

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Chapters 37-41Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3

Chapter 37 Summary: “The Devil in the Details”

In the car on the way back to Austin, Bradford tells Hannah the crime syndicate will eventually track down and kill Owen, and that Bell is playing Hannah to his own advantage. Bradford says what Owen really wanted Hannah to do was to lay low and let Bradford work out how to protect Hannah and Bailey so the three of them could be reunited.

Hannah disagrees. She tells Bradford, ”Bottom line is that you can’t guarantee that won’t happen. You can’t guarantee me and you couldn’t guarantee Owen [...] Which is why he left her with me. Which is why he disappeared and didn’t come directly to you” (285).

Bradford tells Hannah she is making a huge mistake to trust Bell, because Bell cannot keep them safe. Hannah says she knows this, but neither can Bradford, so she is choosing the option that allows Bailey to retain her identity and continue to live her life. Bradford tells her she cannot trust Bell, saying, “It’s crazy for you to think you can. You cannot make a deal with the devil and expect it to turn out okay.” Hannah replies, “Except I just did” (287).

Chapter 38 Summary: “Finding My Way Back to Her”

When Bradford and Hannah arrive back at the US Marshal’s office, Bailey jumps up and grabs Hannah in a hug. She apologizes for leaving the hotel and explains that she received a phone call that she thought might be from Owen and went out in the hall for better reception then just kept walking, ending up back at the library where she found her father—Ethan Young—in the yearbooks. While she was there, Owen called her on an encryption app called Signal. Owen told Bailey he was sorry and he could not come home.

Bradford tells Bailey she needs to go into WITSEC with Hannah so she can see Owen again, but the phone call has convinced Bailey Owen does not intend to come home. Bailey says what she wants to do is resume her life in Sausalito with Hannah.

Chapter 39 Summary: “Two Years and Four Months Ago”

Hannah remembers the hours after her first date with Owen, when they returned to her workshop and Owen asked her to demonstrate how she turns wood. Hannah said each piece of wood has one thing that defines it, and Owen suggested the same is true of people. When Hannah asked what one thing defined Owen, he answered without hesitation, saying, ”There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter” (296).

Chapter 40 Summary: “Sometimes You Can Go Home Again”

On the airplane headed home, Hannah tells Bailey that her uncle and grandfather will be visiting in the future. Bailey asks Hannah whether she will be present for all of Bailey’s interactions with the family she does not remember, and Hannah assures her that she will.

As Hannah contemplates her future without Owen, she knows both she and Bailey will have to deal with the grief of losing him. She consoles herself with the thought that given the choice and even knowing what she knows now, she would still meet and marry Owen and experience it all again.

In a gesture that signals how far Hannah and Bailey have come in their relationship, Hannah pulls a hoodie out of her carry-on and gives it to Bailey, who is cold, to wear on the plane.

Chapter 41 Summary: “Five Years Later. Or Eight. Or Ten.”

Several years after the events in Austin, Hannah is displaying furniture at the Pacific Design Center and waiting to meet Bailey for dinner. Both women live in Los Angeles, Hannah having sold the houseboat as soon as Bailey finished high school. Bailey is dating and doing well.

A man approaches Hannah, who describes him saying, “His shaggy hair is buzz cut short and darker, and his nose is crooked, like it’s been broken. He wears a button-down shirt, rolled up, revealing a sleeve of tattoos, crawling out to his hand, to his fingers, like a spider” (302). Something catches Hannah’s eye. It is the wedding ring she made for Owen on the man’s hand.

Hannah confesses she thinks she sees Owen everywhere, and she is not sure this man is Owen. But then the man says something letting Hannah know for sure that the strange man is her husband. He says, “The could-have-been boys still love you” (303).

Flustered, and knowing she cannot speak with him, Hannah looks down as the man departs. When she looks up again, Bailey is there, and calls her “Mom.”

Chapters 37-41 Analysis

Chapter 37 recaps the argument Hannah has made several times about why she is choosing the path she is choosing: Her conviction that it is not only the only way forward, but that it is also what Owen intended for her to do as the best possible outcome for Bailey. The chapter ends with a cliffhanger when Hannah tells Bradford she just made a deal with the devil (Bell), and the reader waits to see whether Hannah will be vindicated in her decision.

In Chapter 38, Hannah returns to Bailey, whose relationship with Hannah has drastically changed. As the ultimate determinant of what she and Hannah will do, Bailey now has agency she did not have earlier in the story. Unlike when she was small and Owen took her from Austin, Bailey now has a choice. At the end of the chapter, Bailey says she wants to go home, and the reader breathes a sigh of relief at the resolution of four days of fast-paced, often chaotic, events.

Chapter 39 provides a transition from the events surrounding Owen’s disappearance by taking the reader back to Owen and Hannah’s first date, when he said the one characteristic that defined him was his willingness to do absolutely anything for his daughter. This has been the central theme of the book, of course, and the reader is now ready to glimpse Hannah and Bailey’s future.

First, however, Bailey and Hannah need to get home. The title of Chapter 40, “Sometimes You Can Go Home Again,” is an authorial nod towards author Thomas Wolfe, who famously said one can never go home again in his novel You Can’t Go Home Again. These small gestures are an effective way for the author to make readers who catch them included in the author’s joking banter.

Hannah makes a small but meaningful gesture when she takes a sweatshirt out of her carry-on and hands it to Bailey on the plane. It is a maternal act, signaling to the reader how much the relationship between Hannah and Bailey has evolved. The hoodie represents Hannah’s acceptance of her future: She is now Bailey’s mother and responsible for keeping Bailey safe.

In the final chapter, Hannah is approached by a man wearing the wedding ring she made him, and who refers to the “could-have-been” boys. She knows for sure it is Owen. Both the ring and this turn of phrase were present in the Prologue, and signal that the story has reached its end. In the last line, Bailey approaches Hannah and calls her “Mom.” This is an emotional conclusion, leaving the reader satisfied that all questions have been answered and all conflicts have been resolved.