logo

52 pages 1 hour read

Lucy Score

Things We Left Behind

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapters 11-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary: “Shania Twain Is a Beautiful Badass”

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of domestic abuse.

The narrative shifts to 23 years in the past. Simon teaches a young Lucian how to play chess at the Walton breakfast table. When Karen returns home with groceries, she sees Lucian’s bruises and mistakes them for football injuries, not realizing that they were inflicted by Lucian’s abusive father, Ansel. Sloane is currently out on a date with Jonah Bluth, a junior that Lucian dislikes because of the disrespectful way he speaks about women in the locker room. The Waltons fix one of Lucian’s favorite dinners, and later that night, Lucian’s father comes home angry and drunk. Angered by the chess book that Simon has given Lucian, Ansel beats him and leaves.

Sloane invites Lucian into her room afterward and tends to his bleeding lip. Lucian doesn’t feel comfortable going to the police because his father is friends with the Police Chief, Wylie, who allows his father to consistently get away with illegal drunk driving. Lucian makes Sloane promise never to call the police on his father. Sloane convinces him to stay and listen to three tracks of her new Shania Twain album. They hold onto each other, and Lucian stays for more than three songs.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Livin’ La Vida Library”

Sloane’s workday at the library is bombarded by constant, intrusively sexual thoughts of Lucian. However, when he visits the library to return a book that Sloane left in his office, the interaction ends in another fight. Maeve visits shortly afterward with information on Mary Louise Upshaw, who is being held at a nearby correctional facility. Mary Louise is 11 years into her harsh 20-year sentence for “possession and transporting a controlled substance” (167). Maeve also admits that she just recently ended a secret relationship because she doesn’t have the time to devote to a serious romance.

Chapter 13 Summary: “An Electrifying Dinner”

Lucian and Sloane both attend a group dinner at Naomi’s and are surprised to see each other. Knox hooks them both up to period pain simulators and tasks Waylay with shocking whoever cannot remain cordial during the dinner. After an embarrassing fight about who can better endure a pain level of 10 on the machine, they decide to call a truce for the sake of their friend group.

Chapter 14 Summary: “Red Flags”

Sloane speaks to Lina and Naomi about the Mary Louise case and the legal aid idea she mentioned after her father’s funeral. They all want to visit Mary Louise in prison, but Lucian, Knox, and Nash are against the idea. When conversation turns to the unsuccessful online dating profile that Sloane recently created, everyone agrees that it needs some work. While the others update her profile, Sloane settles in with a bourbon and subconsciously rubs her right wrist, which she broke in high school. Lucian asks if her wrist still bothers her, drawing everyone’s attention to the old injury. She has never told the rest of them the story behind this injury, so she expertly avoids answering questions. Meanwhile, Lina proudly proclaims that Sloane’s new dating profile has already received matches. Lucian abruptly leaves the room.

Chapter 15 Summary: “Prison Lot Strip Tease”

Lucian monitors Sloane in the days after Naomi’s dinner, certain that she’ll secretly go to the prison alone. When she finally does, Lucian meets her there. His team has investigated Mary Louise and learned that she has earned two degrees and has started a creative writing program while incarcerated. Mary Louise shares her side of the story. After her divorce, her son Allen—who was 15 years old at the time—decided to sell drugs to relieve Mary Louise’s financial burdens. Mary Louise got pulled over one day for a burnt-out headlight and was caught with five pounds of marijuana hidden in the vehicle. Once she discovered that the drugs were Allen’s, she pled guilty to preserve his bright future. The prosecutor offered her a six-month sentence, but the judge decided to make an example of her and gave her a 20-year sentence instead. Her story convinces Sloane to advocate for her. After the visit, Sloane changes in the prison parking lot to go on a date with a man named Massimo. Lucian obsesses over her safety and is internally jealous, but she assures him that she has taken all the necessary precautions.

Chapter 16 Summary: “Crunchy Soup and Bad First Dates”

During her date with Massimo, Lucian texts her to ask how things are going. Sloane admits that she has been horribly deceived and gives Lucian her location when he asks. Lucian strides into the restaurant, swiftly deals with her sexist date, and returns to the table for lunch with Sloane. During their shared lunch, Lucian receives a call that reveals that Felix Metzer—the man who sold the list of law enforcement names to Duncan Hugo—has been murdered. Sloane knows better than anyone that Lucian will protect others at all costs even as he fails to worry about himself. She worries for his safety should Anthony Hugo discover that he is working on this case.

Chapter 17 Summary: “Too Close for Comfort”

Lucian visits Duncan Hugo in prison to gain further information. Duncan reveals that Felix Metzer regularly saw a woman named Maureen Fitzgerald, who may have more information on leads that Lucian can follow. Maureen does borderline illegal investigative work for Lucian, but before he can reach out to her, he is bombarded with other obligations. Special Agent Idler calls for a case update, Karen Walton texts about dinner plans, and Petula reveals that Lucian’s assistant, Holly, was harassed by two men in a black Chevy Tahoe. After running the plates, Lucian discovers that the vehicle is registered to one of Hugo’s corporations. Lucian interprets the assault on Holly as a warning from Hugo’s team; he and Nolan track down and set the Tahoe on fire to send a message back.

Lucian returns home after having dinner with Sloane’s mother, Karen, and texts Sloane the contact information for a trusted attorney. They text back and forth about their day, which leads to a phone conversation. When their conversation gets too intimate, Lucian hurls an insult at Sloane to reestablish their animosity, then hangs up.

Chapter 18 Summary: “Ruins of the Past”

After a horrible day at work, Sloane takes her frustration out on Lucian by yelling at him for not properly taking care of his trash bins. Lucian bribes Sloane with a pretzel in exchange for hearing about her latest bad date. When he advises her to take her love life slower, Sloane retorts, “That’s easy for you to say. You can have kids when you’re seventy-five” (246). Lucian admits that he has had a vasectomy.

Sloane pries into the details of the Anthony Hugo case, but Lucian warns her away from it for her own safety. Worried about his safety, Sloane insists that he doesn’t have to right all the wrongs his father committed. Lucian admits that his father died last summer, and Sloane becomes angry. As a victim of Ansel Rollins’s abuse herself, she shares Lucian’s opinion that Ansel deserved to serve a long life in prison and endure an excruciating death instead of having a swift, painless stroke in his sleep. She accuses Ansel of ruining their past relationship by making Lucian believe that he is damaged. However, Lucian blames Sloane for how things ended between them.

Chapter 19 Summary: “Mistakes Were Made”

The narrative shifts to 22 years in the past. A teenage Lucian wakes up in the middle of the night to realize that his father beating his mother. When Lucian sees the bloodied knife in Ansel’s hand, he fights back for the first time. Meanwhile, Sloane agonizes over whether to call the police or to honor her promise to Lucian. At the sound of shattering glass next door, she makes the call. When the police arrive, Ansel tells them that Lucian attacked him and his wife unprovoked. Wylie arrests Lucian, leaving his mother unprotected against his father. Lucian is furious with Sloane, but he also fears for her safety around his father.

Chapter 20 Summary: “No One Else Can Have Her”

The narrative returns to the present. Lucian meets with Maureen Fitzgerald, hoping that her connection with Felix will allow him to discover who placed Nash’s name on the hit list of law enforcement officers that Hugo commissioned. Maureen connects Felix to Tate Dilton. Though the motivations don’t line up, Lucian wonders if all roads will lead back to a dead man. At the hotel bar, Lucian can’t keep his mind off thoughts of Sloane and is shocked to find Sloane at the same bar, surrounded by amorous men. Lucian pretends that Sloane is his wife to get the men around her to disperse. She admits that she is there to have sex with a stranger because her dating life has been unsuccessful. Lucian offers himself, believing that having sex once will officially put an end to their mutual attraction.

Chapters 11-20 Analysis

By strategically interspersing flashback scenes of Sloane and Lucian’s childhood throughout the narrative, the author creates a sense of emotional depth and tension around the pair’s tumultuous interactions. As they cycle through periods of animosity and mutual attraction, the glimpses into the past offer much-needed context for the unresolved emotional issues that still remain between them. Additionally, the scenes offer moments of dramatic irony, particularly with the well-meaning yet ignorant insistence of Sloane’s parents that the young Lucian give up the dangerous football antics that they assume to be the source of his bruises. For example, Karen states, “There are too many ways to get hurt. And yes, young bodies heal faster, but you don’t know what that kind of damage can add up to later in life” (140). The bruises are actually products of Lucian’s abusive father, not football, but even so, Karen’s sentiment proves true, for although the physical bruises of his childhood come and go, they leave a lasting impression on his psyche well into his adulthood, causing deeper issues in everything from love life to his career motivations.

For example, Lucian’s decision to have a vasectomy reflects his hidden desire to avoid creating Complex Family Legacies of his own, for he has no wish to pass on his father’s legacy to another generation. Because he is dominated by his fear of creating a family that echoes the toxic aspects of his own upbringing, he takes the drastic measure of ensuring that he will never have any family at all. Tellingly, the adult Sloane demonstrates her deep understanding of Lucian’s thought process when she reassures him, “You don’t have to be like them […] You’re already better. […] You’d do it better than they did” (247). This moment of tacit understanding and empathy foreshadows the fact that despite the pair’s overt animosity, they still share a significant emotional connection that only needs the right set of circumstances to flower once again. However, in the meantime, these fears have become so ingrained in Lucian’s head and heart that mere assurances cannot change his outlook on his past.

The flashback chapters from Lucian’s perspective also provide a logical explanation for his work with Rollins Consulting, which engages in an array of tactics to remove corrupt politicians from power. His current career also reflects his deep desire to mitigate The Impact of Corruption wherever he finds it, and this passion is an attempt to overcome the hopelessness and terror he felt during his teenage years. During that time, he was stuck in an endless cycle of abuse, for thanks to the unbridled corruption of Police Chief Wylie Ogden, calling upon the police to put an end to the violence was never a viable option. Former Police Chief Wylie Ogden had been best friends with Lucian’s father, and his history of condoning the man’s toxic and illegal behavior allowed Ansel to terrorize Lucian for years. This early injustice became the starting point for Lucian’s growing distrust in the justice system, and it also fuels his determination to build his adult career by weeding out any forms of corruption he can find.

The traumas in Lucian’s past also explain his need to work on Rebuilding a Sense of Self-Worth. By providing key glimpses of the most damaging moments of Lucian’s childhood, Score implicitly explains why Lucian sabotages his chances at developing a healthy romance and starting a family. Because Lucian grew up with the certainty that Ansel would destroy anything that he suspected was important to his son, Lucian has become conditioned to believe that he simply is not worthy of having things that make him happy, and as an adult, he applies this misguided belief to his feelings for Sloane and subconsciously devises ways to sabotage their burgeoning connection. Additionally, the fact that he is biologically related to a man he regards as a monster encourages Lucian’s false belief that he has “brought darkness with [him]” and that “[his] bruises [are] contagious” (149). For this reason, he believes that loving Sloane will either break her or bring darkness into her otherwise perfect life. By contrast, the difference between their respective family legacies further alienates Lucian from Sloane. Lucian easily recognizes the similarities that Sloane holds with her father, and he admires her desire to seek justice for those who have been wronged, like Mary Louise. However, her ideals only serve to convince Lucian that in comparison with the woman he secretly loves, he is somehow “stained with bad blood” (201) and will never be worthy of love like the Waltons are. Ultimately, Lucian sees his family legacy as being far more similar to that of Anthony’s son, Duncan Hugo, who is serving an indefinite prison sentence.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text