Things We Do in the Dark

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

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Part 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 6, Chapter 46 Summary

Twenty-five years after switching identities with her dead friend, Mae, Paris returns to Toronto with Drew. Memories begin to flood back to Paris.

Part 6, Chapter 47 Summary

The two head north to Maple Sound, to the house of Paris’s aunt and uncle, where Ruby is staying. Paris carries a cashier’s check for $1 million, which she believes is enough to settle matters with her mother.

Drew agrees to wait in the car while Paris goes to the house to meet her mother for the first time in more than 20 years. The conversation is awkward. Her mother accuses, “I did twenty-five years in prison for you” (332). The secret emerges in their conversation. Ruby had allowed Charles Baxter to molest her own daughter, and Ruby had become jealous of Joey. Paris reminds her mother that the night that Charles died, the two of them had a nasty fight. Paris remembers how, that night, Charles had come to her bed. “All she could do was close her eyes, remain still, and allow the darkness to take over” (334).

It was then that her mother stormed into the bedroom. Charles told her at first that Joey had seduced him. The fight immediately sparked, Ruby calling Charles a “sick fuck” and Charles calling Ruby “a gold-digging bitch” (335). Joey slipped out and hid in the bathroom. When she returned later, she found her mother, her dress covered in blood, holding a bloody knife over the body of Charles. Joey then heard Charles moan. He was still alive, staring at her from the floor. It was Joey who retrieved the ice skate, laced it on, and then stomped Charles’s neck, “feeling the muscles and tendons split apart” (336).

Part 6, Chapter 48 Summary

Paris wants to swap the cashier’s check for the urn with her name on it that contains the ashes of Betty Savage. Paris shows her mother the cashier’s check. Ruby rejects the amount. She taunts her daughter: “Get off your moral high horse […] We’re exactly the same. We’re survivors” (338). Reluctantly, Ruby agrees to take the money and hands the urn to Paris. Paris refuses to give her the money. “Nobody will believe you, you are a convicted murderer” (339). She leaves the house and heads for the car, where Drew waits. Ruby, incensed, storms out of the house and recklessly shoves her daughter into a pond. Paris panics; the pond is deep, and she cannot swim. She lets go of the urn and the ashes float away. She feels Drew pull her to the surface.

Drew has called the police—and he used his phone to record Ruby’s attack. It will be sufficient, he tells Paris, to revoke Ruby’s parole. Even as Ruby rants that her daughter is alive, Drew tells one of the officers that the urn containing the ashes of Ruby’s daughter, Joey, had cracked opened in the pond. Paris, now free of her past, realizes how much she loved Jimmy and that she must now begin a new life with Drew.

Part 6 Analysis

The resolution of the novel contains one more revelation: that 13-year-old Joey laced up the ice skate and killed the wounded Charles Baxter. This murder highlights The Traumatic Impact of Abuse, since Hillier shows again that Joey learned that violence is a solution and that domination is the only thing that frees a person. The murder of Charles Baxter is a chilling moment: Joey “brought [the ice skate] back with her to the master bedroom, where she took a seat in the chair in the corner, filled with calm certainty about what was going to happen next. She slipped her tiny foot into the smooth leather boot, and laced it up” (336). This is the final time that the reader sees Joey slipping into a persona, putting “her tiny foot into the smooth leather boot,” hence laying the foundation for the identity-related secrets that she will keep throughout the novel. As she brings down her foot, she feels the muscles and tendons “split apart with a wet crunch” (336). This gruesome description heightens the sensory experience for the reader by enveloping them in both the tactile and the sonic qualities of the murder.

At this point, finally, all the things done in the dark have been revealed. No more revelations are left. What Paris so zealously guards in the opening chapter as she is led away in handcuffs for a murder that she knows she did not commit has all come to light. This is hence a late but significant moment of character development. Paris’s past is no longer in shadow as the reader is now privy to her secrets. She is no longer running from herself. However, that revelation is not the closing moment, as Hillier creates a final scene of dramatic action that gives the novel a triumphant—though tainted—ending. When Ruby pushes her daughter into the farm pond, knowing that she cannot swim, Hillier suggests that Ruby’s abuses come full circle since Ruby tries to complete the murder of her daughter that she has been slowly enacting since her childhood.

The novel, however, ends on a note that speaks to The Resiliency of Love. Love, presented as resilient and heroic, rescues Paris. Drew’s “strong arms” grab her and pull her from the dark swirl of the pond (340), symbolic of the emotional maelstrom of her life. With the ashes of Betty Savage floating away in the pond and the police taking Ruby away, Paris finally stands apart from her past, but she hardly stands alone. She is ready now to test the possibility of love. The epigraph to this closing section is the lyrics to the tender song “Call and Answer” by Canadian alt-rock band Barenaked Ladies, which reflect this aspect of Paris’s character development: “If you call, I will answer/ And if you fall, I'll pick you up/ And if you court disaster / I'll point you home” (325). If ripping up the blackmail check symbolizes Paris’s declaration of independence from her dark past, her embrace of Drew and her acknowledgement of his love represents her hesitant declaration of dependence.