The Lovely Bones: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

When Jack returns from building the tent at Harvey’s that day, Abigail is not home. Jack goes up to his den and begins making notes, strategizing about how to get Harvey to open up and admit his guilt. He also writes that he thinks Susie is watching him, which makes Susie deeply excited.

Lindsey returns home, and Jack is relieved to have some noise and company in the house. Susie momentarily resents her younger sister taking the attention away from her, but concedes that Lindsey needs their father, too. Though Susie begrudges Lindsey Jack’s attention, she does respect her way of handling Susie’s death—completely stoically, allowing herself to think of Susie only in private moments when she is totally alone in her room.

Jack knocks on Lindsey’s door, and Lindsey shouts for him to go away. Jack begs Lindsey to let him in, and, after a moment, she does. Jack asks Lindsey how she’s doing, and thinks, sickened, of how she walks past Mr. Harvey’s house on the way to school every single day. Lindsey tells Jack that she wants to be alone, insisting that she is handling Susie’s death in her own way. Jack tells Lindsey that he understands, although he doesn’t, and goes downstairs to place a call to Len Fenerman.

Jack knows that the window of time during which physical evidence connecting a killer to a murder is usually found is growing smaller each day, and so he calls Len to tell him that he believes Mr. Harvey knows something about Susie’s death. He explains the bizarre, ritualistic building the tent, and contextualizes Mr. Harvey’s loneliness, as well as the fact that everyone in the neighborhood thinks him odd. Len assures Jack he will check things out, and warns Jack not to mention his theory to anyone, or to approach Harvey again.

Abigail is downstairs, having arrived home while Jack was on the phone. She is hiding in the bathroom, eating macaroons. Buckley knocks on the door over and over, shouting “Momma.” Abigail “despise[s]” the word. When she finally emerges from the bathroom, Buckley asks her where Susie is. Jack, overhearing this, distracts Buckley by asking him if he wants to go to the zoo that week. Jack hates to deceive and bribe his young son, but does not know how to tell him that his older sister is dead.

On his first trip to George Harvey’s house in the days after Susie’s murder, Len Fenerman finds nothing remarkable or suspicious about the man. He finds him a to be lonely person, whose wife had died shortly before he moved into the house they were supposed to share together, and who spends his days and makes his living building dollhouses for specialty toy stores. On his second visit to Harvey’s home, in the wake of Jack’s phone call, Fenerman asks Harvey about his recent conversation with Jack Salmon. Mr. Harvey replies that Jack recently helped him build a bridal tent—he tells Fenerman that he builds one each year for his deceased wife, Leah; normally, he builds them inside, but this year wanted to construct it outside. He explains that during the construction, he tried to express his condolences to Jack, but Jack must have taken things the wrong way.

Fenerman asks where Harvey usually builds the tent. Harvey answers the basement, and volunteers to show the detective the space. Fenerman insists that he has intruded enough. Harvey asks how the investigation is coming along, and Fenerman cryptically answers that the clues will be found when they want to be found. Mr. Harvey suggests that a neighborhood kid, Joe Ellis, who has harmed some animals in the neighborhood, might have been involved, but Fenerman tells Harvey that Jack Ellis had an alibi. Harvey tells Fenerman that he wishes there were more he could do to help with the case.

Later, Len calls Jack Salmon to tell him that though Harvey is odd, there is nothing incriminating or suspicious about him. When Jack asks what Harvey said about the tent, Len relays that Harvey built it in honor of his late wife, Leah. Jack counters that a neighbor had once told Abigail that Mr. Harvey’s wife’s name had been Sophie, but quickly begins to second-guess himself. Once he gets off the phone with Len, Jack opens his notebook to write some things down. He writes “Leah? Sophie?” and Susie, observing from above, says that though Jack was unaware of it, “he had begun a list of the dead.”

On Christmas Day, Buckley plays happily with his toys, but the atmosphere in the rest of the house is somber. Buckley soon announces that there is a man outside—it is Samuel Heckler, one of Lindsey’s school friends, who has come to visit her. She gets up to greet him, leaving the game of Monopoly she and Jack are playing together. While Samuel and Lindsey converse in the kitchen, Buckley asks Jack where Susie is. Jack knows he has to explain Susie’s death to Buckley, and uses one of the Monopoly pieces—the shoe, which was always Susie’s chosen piece—to explain that Susie is gone, and is never coming back. Buckley, Susie says, will keep the shoe on his dresser for years, until the day it disappears seemingly into thin air.

In the kitchen, Samuel gives Lindsey a present. She opens it and finds a necklace inside—it is half of a heart. Samuel reveals that he is wearing a necklace which bears the other half. Susie watches excitedly as her sister kisses Samuel, and feels “almost alive again.”