The Lovely Bones: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Mr. Harvey arrives at a tin-roofed shack in Connecticut. He killed a young waitress in the shack years earlier, and now, as he enters it, finds that the earth inside of it has been dug up. Mr. Harvey lies down on the ground and falls asleep next to the waitress’s empty grave.

To counter the list of the dead, Susie has begun keeping a list of the living—she has noticed that Len Fenerman does this, too. Off-duty, he notes all of the girls and women he observes throughout his days—living, breathing women. Len sees wounded women, too—they come to him for help at the station, but he can also sense the pain of women he sees in shops, restaurants, or on the street.

Len writes in Susie’s file for the first time in a long time. He has obtained the name of another potential victim, Sophie Cichetti, and has obtained the Pennsylvania keystone charm, though it did not reveal any fingerprints or other evidence. Len plans on giving the charm back to Jack, though this is against protocol. Len, having gotten word that Jack is in the hospital, believes that the charm will be a talisman that might even speed Jack’s recovery. Watching Len, Susie realizes that he has “followed the physical to try to understand things that were impossible to comprehend,” and feels that in this way, they are the same.

Outside the hospital, Abigail buys an enormous bunch of flowers from a vendor and brings them to Jack’s room. Everyone else has gone home from the hospital, but Abigail is not ready to go back to the house just yet—she needs some time to think. She goes across the street to a diner, sits alone in a booth, and eats. A man across from her looks at her, and Abigail falls into her old habit—one she has not held onto in California—of sizing up every man she sees as Susie’s potential murderer. As Abigail eats, she thinks that she cannot handle being home for more than a few days.

Back at the hospital, Abigail plans to wait for Jack to wake and then say goodbye and return to California. As Abigail sits at Jack’s bedside, she takes his hand in hers, and wishes she could climb up onto the bed and lie beside him. She realizes that she is still in love with Jack, and wonders how she can love someone so much while keeping it a secret from herself every day.

At about two in the morning it begins to rain. In Connecticut, rain falls on the tin-roofed shack where Mr. Harvey is sleeping—he is dreaming of Lindsey and the number on the back of her jersey flashing at him as she ran away from his house that fateful day. He has this dream whenever he feels threatened.

Jack wakes at close to four in the morning. He wishes he could hold the sleeping Abigail, but he is too weak. Instead he watches the rain hit the windows of his room. Susie slips into the room to be near her mother and father, and is present in a way she has never been—she is beside them, not hovering over them. Jack begins to speak—it is unclear if he is addressing Susie or Abigail. He says, “I thought if I was still enough you might come back,” and Abigail rouses from sleep.

Jack asks Abigail how it was to see Buckley and Lindsey, and she admits that it was unbelievably hard. Jack confesses to Abigail that he fell in love with her all over again while she was away, and Susie, watching them, experiences deep envy for the love they share—for the fact that Jack loves Abigail in spite of, and perhaps even because of, her “brokenness.” Jack asks Abigail if she will stay, and she tells him that she will for a while. She reveals that she did not come back to “pretend”—she came back because she feared Jack was dying.

Jack tells Abigail that Susie appeared in the room just now, and presses Abigail to admit that she too sees Susie now and then. Abigail admits that she sees Susie “everywhere.” Jack asks what Abigail would say if he told her that Susie was in the room ten minutes ago; Abigail confesses that she would say he was “insane and probably right.” Susie watches as her parents kiss one another and together begin to cry.