Losing Hope

Needing a minute to collect herself, Sky goes to the bathroom upstairs as Holder waits in the kitchen. When he hears her in Les’s room, he follows her upstairs and finds her sitting on Les’s bed holding a photo of Les and Grayson. Sky sees another photo on the nightstand of Holder and Les as children. She recognizes the children and the house in the photo and begins to put together memories from her past. She begins to describe items at the house in the photograph that are not in the frame, like the swing set, water well, and the too-tall countertop. She asks Holder if her name is Hope, and he says yes.

Holder drives Sky to the airport for a change of scene as she grills him with questions about what he knows of her past; she remembers nothing before Karen adopted her. Though he tries to avoid it, eventually, he tells her that he watched from his yard as she was kidnapped as a child.

Sky gets out of the car, saying that she needs a “chapter break.” She heads back towards Holder and slaps him and continues to hit and scream at him. He holds her. Sky wants to know if he was ever going to tell her and refuses to think that Karen had anything to do with her disappearance. When Holder tells her that her birthday is in May rather than September, it is too much for her and she asks to be taken home. Feeling that he needs some space to think as well, he lets her go.

The chapter begins with a short letter to Les in which Holder tells his sister that he doesn’t know what he’s doing but that he couldn’t leave Sky alone. In the present scene, Holder sleeps in Sky’s bed and wakes to her screams from a nightmare. She remembers Karen being the one to take her from her driveway all those years ago. When Karen opens the bedroom door, Sky begs Holder to help her get out of the house. Karen threatens to call the police, but when Sky and Holder call her on the bluff, she backs down and lets them leave.

Sky has asked Holder to take her to Austin, where they lived as children, and Holder wakes up in a hotel room and watches her sleep. In the hotel cabana in the courtyard, he gives her more details about what he remembers of when she was taken. When he expresses guilt, Sky tells him that he was a little boy and not to blame. He speaks about her father, a police chief, who scared him when he was a child. He then recounts the events following Hope’s disappearance when he was interviewed by police and watching news reports constantly in hopes that she would be found. Sky asks Holder to take her to her childhood house where her father still lives.

When they arrive at her father’s house, Sky goes inside. Holder, standing by the window, hears a crash and a scream and runs inside to help Sky. When he finds her, he sees that she has destroyed her childhood bedroom. A mirror is broken and her hand drips with blood. Holder carries her to the car and gives her his jacket to wipe up the blood. Inside the house, he cleans up her room, putting the curtains back up and making the bed. He returns to the car and finds her with her head on her knees. He comforts her, promising himself that he will never leave her again.

Back in the hotel room, Holder apologizes again and Sky tells him that he is not responsible for what her father did to her. He realizes that her father abused her. She cries and he holds her until she asks him to have sex with her in desperation. Shocked, Holder refuses, but Sky begs him, saying that it isn’t fair that her father is the only person to have done that to her. She thinks that having sex with Holder will partly take away the pain. He tries to appease her but cannot go through with it. Sky thanks Holder for taking care of her, and Holder tells her that he loves her for the first time. When she tells him that she loves him back, he feels a sense of peace that he has never felt before.

Sky asks Holder to take her to her father’s house one last time. When they drive up, they see her father at his mailbox. Holder thinks that Sky is ready to leave, but she hops out of the car unexpectedly. When Holder goes after her, Sky’s father, a police chief, approaches asking if there is a problem. Soon, he recognizes Sky, calling her “princess,” and she faints. When she comes to, she demands to know why he abused her. He blames it on grief and alcoholism. Sky gives him an ultimatum: If he leaves her alone and never contacts her again, she will not go to the police. But first, she wants to know if her father has done this to anyone else. He admits that she was not the only one, and he nods toward the house next door where Holder lived with his sister. Holder realizes that Hope’s father sexually abused his sister.

In a flashback, Holder recounts finding Les’s body and his mother’s panicked reaction upon seeing his face afterward—her mother’s intuition told her that something was wrong. Watching his mother fall to the floor crying, Holder thought that the word “devastated” should be reserved for mothers of dead children. Now, having heard that Sky’s father sexually abused Les, Holder understands that brothers can be devastated, too.

Back in the present scene, in a moment of rage, Holder moves toward Sky’s father. However, his protective instinct for Sky stops him. Sky’s father then radios into his station telling them that there is a man down. As he reaches for his gun, Holder realizes too late what he is going to do. Sky’s father apologizes to Sky, then shoots himself in the head. Holder drags a screaming Sky to the car and begs her to stop screaming as sirens can be heard approaching. Sky cries the whole way back to the hotel.

Once they return to the hotel room, Holder helps Sky into the shower to wash her father’s blood from her body. Gently, he soaps up her hair and body as she follows his instructions. Both Holder and Sky are broken, him by his knowledge of his sister’s abuse, and Sky by the memories of her own abuse flooding back. Out of the shower, they kiss desperately, and Holder realizes that though he is hurt by Les’s death, he is still alive and can be happy. They begin to have sex until Holder—overwhelmed with emotion—slows down his movements and retreats. Sky takes over and gets on top of him, assuring him that she loves him and wants this.

In a letter to Les, Holder tells her that things with Sky are going well and explains that Karen is Sky’s aunt, who kidnapped her as a child to protect her from her father’s abuse. Karen, as a younger sister, had also experienced abuse from Sky’s father and could not watch Sky go through the same. Holder then apologizes for not knowing what Les went through when they were children and wishes that Karen had kidnapped her, too.

This chapter contains a series of texts from Holder to Sky, Karen, and his father. It begins with him texting Sky to wear a sexy Halloween costume. Karen responds from Sky’s phone to say that Sky is grounded, and Holder good-naturedly apologizes. He then texts his father apologizing and asking if he can brink Sky to visit for Thanksgiving. He then decides that it is finally time to read Les’s suicide letter.

In a letter to Holder, Les explains her decision to kill herself, beginning with her abuse from Sky’s father which lasted for years until Les finally told their mother. Their parents pressed charges, and he was arrested but got out of it because people pitied him regarding Hope’s disappearance. Wanting a change of scenery for Les, her parents decided to relocate to a different city, but her father could not find another job. She explains to Holder that this is likely the cause of their parents’ divorce.

Because Holder had been so traumatized by Hope’s disappearance, their parents decided to keep Les’s abuse from him, thinking that the knowledge would break him emotionally. They kept another secret from Holder as well. A few years earlier, Les and her mother saw what looked to be Hope in a restaurant. The woman, hurrying Hope to the car, begged Les and her mother to keep the sighting quiet, saying, “She can’t go back to him. Please don’t do that to her. Please, please, please” (310).

From this exchange, Les and her mother realized that Hope was abused, too, and was kidnapped to get her away from her father. They did not tell anyone that they saw Hope.

Les ends her letter by telling Holder that she is a “lost cause” and asking him not to blame himself because he has already saved her so many times.

Holder drops the notebook and cries.

Holder finds his mother in her office and confronts her about her knowledge of Hope’s disappearance and Les’s abuse. His mother apologizes, and he tells her that Sky is Hope. Embracing his mother, he lets her know that she did her best and that it is time for them both to heal.

At Holder’s house, his mother greets Sky warmly—remembering her as Hope—and they begin to cry. She then pulls her aside, peppering her with questions about her life. Holder finds the questions refreshing because they are unrelated to her kidnapping or her life as Hope. The threesome spends the afternoon cleaning out Les’s room, finally able to face their loss. Holder sets the two notebooks full of letters aside to keep.

Alone in Sky’s house for the first time in weeks, Holder and Sky have sex three times. Afterward, they lie in bed together and Sky tells Holder that she remembers the first time they held hands as a child. When Karen asked her to choose a new name, she chose the name Sky because of their conversations. “You were always there, you know. Even when I couldn’t remember… you were always there,” (318) she says to Holder.

Holder tells her in response that he wants her to call him “Dean” from that point forward.

In a final letter to Les, Holder tells her that he cleaned her room and that he is headed to college with Sky. He also mentions that spending time with Sky has been good for their mother, relieving some of her grief. Recalling an early chapter in which he describes Les’s laugh as his favorite sound, he tells Les that he misses her laugh. He feels lucky to have had her in his life for 17 years, even though it doesn’t feel like enough. His tattoo may spell out “hopeless,” but Holder finally has hope again.