69 pages • 2 hours read
Clare MackintoshI Let You Go
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A 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 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
At her kitchen table on the anniversary of Jacob’s death, Jenna looks at news reports of the accidents. There are no developments, no leads. She hasn’t seen Patrick, being ashamed of her behavior and not brave enough to apologize. She decides to take a walk with Beau and ends up at the vet’s office, where she apologizes to Patrick: “I’m not very good at this sort of thing” (156). He asks if he can cook her supper. She knows if she refuses, she will not see him again, so she agrees to meet him in an hour.
They go to his place, which is full of books. When he asks how long she has been a photographer, she admits she is actually a sculptor, but can’t do that anymore, and shows him her injury. They go into the kitchen, and he tells her not to open the doors of the pine dresser there. They eat casserole from a slow cooker, and Jenna can’t remember when someone last looked after her that way.
Patrick hints at a previous romance gone wrong, asks about hers. She says she had been married for a while. He asks if she feels isolated where she lives, and she replies that she sees Bethan most days. He provides dessert, but she tells him she doesn’t really eat dessert. She wonders inwardly if she should open up to him: “Shall I tell you a story, Patrick?” (162). But she knows she never can.
She refuses his offer to drive her home but tempers it by asking if she’ll see him at the beach in the morning. He asks her to call when she gets home, but she says she doesn’t have a phone. In fact, she got rid of it when she left Bristol. She knows he will watch her as she leaves, and he does.
Chapter 17 Summary
Ray’s phone rings at breakfast. It is work, of course. He doesn’t pick up at Mags’ insistence, but then the house phone rings. It is Kate. They have a witness in Jacob’s case.
The witness is a non-local man who saw a car driving erratically when the accident took place, but never reported it. Unfortunately, when they talk to him, they find he has no information about the driver at all, due to rainy road conditions. He does tell them the car was a J-reg Ford.
They decide to prioritize finding Jacob’s mother, and after a search for Ford Fiestas and Focuses, they can’t locate the car because there are too many registered in the region. Still, Kate thinks they are getting closer. She says, eyes shining, “I can feel it” (169). Ray tells Kate she is officially back on the case.
Chapter 18 Summary
Jenna has agreed to spend an afternoon off with Patrick. By now, most of Penfach knows about them; Iestyn mentioned it the last time she went to ask him about fixing her lock. He told her she didn’t have to worry about stealing, but she still wants it fixed.
She and Patrick go to Port Ellis Lifeboat Station, where Patrick spends a lot of time. While they are talking with someone named David, the phone rings with news of a capsized canoe. Patrick apologies that he has to go to the aid of a missing father and son. Jenna meets a worker there named Helen, who is David’s wife. She reassures Jenna, saying that they always come back. Jenna says it makes her realize—and Jenna finishes the sentence: “How much you need them to come home?” (174). Helen tells her Patrick is a good man.
Jenna is anxious. She goes back to Patrick’s house, where she listens to the news of the rescue on the radio and opens the doors of the pine dresser that Patrick had told her to leave alone. There is nothing sinister inside, but she finds a picture frame with a picture of Patrick with a woman.
Jenna has a dream, in which she hears the thud of a body hitting the hood of a car, but instead of Jacob, it is Patrick. She is awakened by Patrick, finally coming home, who sees that she is frightened by her dream. He says they called off the search, but never found anything. He rests his head on her lap, weeping openly for the father and son, and she joins him.
Chapter 19 Summary
The bodies wash up on Christmas Eve, and Jenna and Patrick are together on the beach when he gets the call about it. He tells her, then, that he had a girlfriend whom he brought back to Port Ellis after university. She didn’t like the quiet life there. One day they had a fight, and she went off to surf, but the riptide took her and they never found her body. He was one of the searchers. She understands, then: “I had imagined his life to be perfect, for there to be nothing more to him than the funny, easygoing persona he presents. But the ghosts he battles are as real as my own” (180).
Patrick brings a Christmas tree to her house and they decorate it. Afterward, she invites him upstairs, and he asks her if she is sure. “I nod. I’m not sure, not really, but I want to find out. I need to know if it can be different” (182). She gives him a negative when he takes hold of the hem of her shirt, and he doesn’t insist. They make love. Afterward, she asks him to leave the light on. And in the morning, she realizes she has actually slept and awoken naturally.
For Christmas, Patrick gives Jenna a coat and a mobile phone. She likes the coat but isn’t sure how she feels about the phone. In return, she has drawn a picture of him coming ashore safely. They talk about family; she admits she tried to find her father while at university, who by then had a whole new family and did not want to relive the past. She also tells Patrick she hasn’t seen her sister in years, because Eve did not like her husband. At that, Patrick asks if Jenna liked her husband, and she replies, “I did once” (187). He asks about children, and Jenna says that her husband wasn’t interested. “It isn’t so far from the truth, after all. Ian never wanted anything to do with his son” (188). When he apologizes for asking so many questions, she realizes she feels safe with him.
Chapter 20 Summary
With the holidays over, Ray and Kate are working on tracing different Bristol-registered Fords and hoping for a breakthrough. At home, Tom’s behavior has become worse, and Mags reminds him of drinks with the neighbors that night. He grumbles about it, saying he hates small talk and thinks it’ll be dull. Mags, disappointed, tells him not to come if he’s going to be in that mood. She says, “Not everything in life can be exciting, Ray” (191).
Talking to Stumpy and Kate about the holidays, he envies Kate’s more carefree life. She says they’ve found an index number—and a name for the potential driver. They have also made progress finding Jacob’s mother, who apparently went away to make a fresh start. Stumpy’s just waiting for an email from local police. As they talk, Kate gets a phone call: they’ve found the driver’s address. Ray tells Stumpy to go to that local station and get Jacob’s mom’s address; he and Kate will find the driver. He looks forward to cancelling his evening plans.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
The theme of recovery continues in these chapters, as Jenna and Patrick’s relationship progresses. It is slow going, since Jenna’s previous experiences have led her to second-guess every part of the dating process. However, all this detail helps to enhance the author’s theme of overcoming abuse. Jenna’s growing relationship with Patrick is the most fraught in this regard, since it was a previous romantic partner who caused her trust issues, and Patrick is looking to take Ian’s place in a way, though he doesn’t realize it.
Specifically in this section, she learns to trust Patrick further. In one example, he warns her against opening a pine dresser because it’s stuffed with old things, and this makes her open it at her first opportunity. She is suspicious of his nature: “Relaxed and contented: a man without secrets or pain” (161). She believes he would be disgusted and revolted by her past, and he clearly does not understand the motivations of some of her actions, such as refusing a ride from him in favor of taking a bus. Additionally, she does not like the fact that he gives her a cell phone because it seems like something someone who wants to control her would do. These reactions are all a result of the theme of domestic violence that runs throughout.
However, what she learns about Patrick through her snooping and discussion with him reveal a more hidden part of Patrick’s character that provides additional depth to him. Patrick is not a man without his own pain, which gives him an intensity during some scenes (such as his discussing the dangers of the ocean) that throw up some intentionally-placed, mild red flags for readers who are rooting for Jenna. In some ways, that previous history makes him seem like a better match for Jenna, who has also lost someone important. Perhaps this revelation is what leads to the next step in their relationship, on Christmas Day.
And again, Mackintosh builds in some spontaneous moments that affect the narrative, and which, under certain circumstances, could have derailed the romance, such as the above snooping in Patrick’s cabinets. Had Jenna made different decisions or reacted differently to his actions, their relationship might have immediately stalled for good.
It is worthwhile to note in this section that the deaths of the lost-at-sea father and teenage son, though rendered mostly abstractly through the empathy of Patrick, sets a note of background for Ian’s fall into the ocean at the end of the book. However, their bodies eventually turn up, which provides a contrast with Ian’s fate at the end, solidifying that ambiguity about Ian’s death that haunts readers after the book’s end. The ocean traditionally symbolizes chaos, and Patrick’s previous partner’s mysterious disappearance into the sea mirror’s Ian’s. Because neither body washes ashore, there is an incompleteness to their fates, an unknowability. The ocean therefore exemplifies randomness and chaos in fate; one never knows whether the ocean will take someone and keep them forever or give them back.
The police procedural element picks up slightly in this section of the book. Readers are led to think there are two separate but related investigations being detailed here: one for the mother, and one for the driver. Mackintosh engages in a bit of literary sleight-of-hand here in order to hide Jenna’s true involvement in the case. This is the prelude that builds up to the arrest that occurs in Chapter 21.
The author here develops the ways in which the investigation infringes upon Ray’s personal life, creating awkward conversations between himself and Kate as well as strife in his family relations. Ray’s continual evasion of responsibilities at home in favor of his more comfortable work life is designed to advance a subplot that focuses on the way family relationships influence and are influenced by other elements in people’s lives. The reader questions whom to blame for Ray’s choices, and whom to blame for Ray and Mags’s son’s delinquency. Ray is obviously a “good” character because he is a cop intent on doing the right thing for Jacob’s family by finding his killer, yet he continually sacrifices his own family in the process.
