Our Missing Hearts: Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

The next morning, Margaret continues her story. She tells Bird about a young Black protester named Marie Johnson who was shot and killed by police just after Bird’s ninth birthday. In the news photo taken just after Marie was shot, she holds a homemade sign that reads “ALL OUR MISSING HEARTS.” News of more PACT child removals brought the lines of Margaret’s final poem to Marie’s mind. At the time, Marie had been studying to be a pediatrician. Despite the general public support for PACT, Marie’s murder triggers outrage and leads more people to Margaret’s poetry collection. The anti-PACT movement adopts “all our missing hearts” as a slogan, despite Margaret’s own indifference to the law.

In the flashback, Margaret’s words continue to spread among those who oppose PACT. A radio host broadcasts about Margaret, calling her a radical person of Asian origin. More media outlets dive into Margaret’s life, interpreting her poetry as encouraging harmful, un-American ideology in young people. They insist that she is clearly loyal to China, her foreign mindset rooted “in the DNA.” Margaret’s publisher is ordered to stop printing her book, and libraries pull it from their shelves. She receives threatening phone calls after her personal information is posted online. Now, even her personal home is unsafe.

Eventually, the public finds out about Bird. Online commenters call Margaret a child abuser and hope that Family Services will come remove him. Ethan’s parents begin to believe the rumors about Margaret, and Ethan cuts contact with them. One day, they find a note from Bird’s teacher warning them that Family Services is looking into them. That night, Margaret prepares to leave her family, seeing no other way to ensure Bird’s safety. She leaves the next morning. When Family Services arrives, Ethan has already burned her books, and he denounces her in front of Bird.

Not knowing yet where to go, Margaret takes a bus to Philadelphia to apologize to Marie’s parents. On their doorstep, she tells Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson who she is, that she is being hunted, that she never meant for her poems to get anyone killed. Deep in grief, Marie’s father has no forgiveness to offer, only bitter disdain. Margaret thinks of how her Asian parents and she have, on occasion, espoused anti-Black bias. The history of her and the Johnsons’ worlds weighs on her. Marie’s mother asks if Margaret has children, and she tells her about Bird, whom she will never see again. Mrs. Johnson welcomes her to “the worst club in the world.” 

Mrs. Johnson invites Margaret in, though Mr. Johnson disapproves. She shows Margaret Marie’s high school photos and a china elephant Marie intentionally broke to see what was inside. Mrs. Johnson laments that no one but her will remember these things. Margaret asks Mrs. Johnson to tell her more about Marie, and for two days Mrs. Johnson does. She tells Margaret to remember the stories and to remember that Marie was a real person. Mrs. Johnson shares insignificant memories of Marie’s childhood and of the plans her daughter had for her future.

On the second night of Margaret’s visit, Mr. Johnson tells her about his last phone call with Marie. He told her not to go to the protest: that nobody of Asian origin would stick their neck out for her. Marie responded that it was wrong to take children from their families, a heavy sentiment that resonated with Marie’s own family, whose research had shown proof of child removal from the years of Black enslavement. Margaret tells Mr. Johnson that neither he nor Marie was wrong. Mr. Johnson tells another story of Marie laughing uncontrollably, a joyful memory. When Margaret leaves, he asks her to put his daughter in a poem. Margaret knows no poem can truly encapsulate a person, but says she will try.

Marie’s parents give Margaret the name of their local librarian, Mrs. Adelman, who was Marie’s friend. Mrs. Adelman recognizes Margaret at once: she is the one who gave Marie a copy of Our Missing Hearts, which has since been removed from the library’s shelves. Mrs. Adelman asks about Bird, and she realizes what Margaret’s presence means: “before they removed him, you removed yourself.” She tells Margaret about the many families that PACT splits up. She has heard of people trying to track down the removed children. She offers to connect Margaret with one such family.

Margaret follows Mrs. Adelman’s connections to family after family whose children have been removed for their violations of PACT. It becomes clear that such violations are widely varied: anything from criticizing PACT in public or on social media, writing about re-placed children or anti-Asian bias can lead to parents being reported. Bribery, donations, and connections might keep one’s child safe from removal, but removal is much more common than Margaret believed. Many families stay silent, hoping good behavior will bring their children back to them. In this way, people stopped speaking about PACT out of fear. Margaret moves as a fugitive from this point forward, avoiding detection just like her mother and father taught her, and wondering how so many stories go untold.

Out of money, Margaret returns to New York City and looks up Domi’s family townhouse on Park Avenue. She knows from news articles that Domi returned to her wealthy father, Claude Duchess, and inherited his electronics company, selling out in the same way she once accused Margaret of doing. Margaret also knows that Domi makes philanthropic use of her wealth, donating to shelters, food banks, and libraries. Before she left home, Margaret hid Domi’s address in Bird’s cubby, the safest place she could think of. After the old friends reunite, Domi tells Margaret she waited out the Crisis with her father and stepmother in their summer cabin, hiding away from it all. She inherited her father’s company (and his debts) when he died.

Though Margaret does not yet have a plan, she feels the need to help the families PACT split apart, and she asks for Domi’s help. Tracing the flow of information, she discovers a network of libraries passing messages via the books shared between them. Encoded in the messages are the names and descriptions of missing children, whom the librarians keep an eye out for, passing on known locations based on things they have overheard. Though matches are rare and families still cannot be reunited, it is the best the librarians can do. Through this network, Margaret contacts more families whose children have been taken.

Margaret moves from place to place, seeking out and talking to families whose children were removed. It often takes a while for her to earn their trust. The families are not all Asian American: anyone who speaks up against PACT is endangered. They are angry and afraid, and some, like a Choctaw woman who lost her granddaughter, tell Margaret that the government taking children is nothing new. She asks those who will speak with her to tell their children’s stories and to tell her what they would say to their children if they could. She writes the stories down in the notebooks she carries with her.

At the start of her journey, Margaret stays in libraries after closing, reading books to distract her from painful thoughts of Ethan and Bird. She discovers the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, who wrote glowing verse about Stalin, hoping that he would free her imprisoned son as a result. Margaret repeats Anna’s story to herself, adding embellishments: she imagines Anna as a poet who burns her work after committing it to memory, spreading it by whispering words into friends’ ears. Eventually, some families invite her to stay nights with them. She wakes in one such home to find a father tucking her in as if she were his own child.

Margaret measures time in Bird’s age, thinking of what she is missing out on. She takes comfort in the strange artistic protests that are popping up all over the country—ice statues of missing children, a gigantic cube with a crack in it labeled “PACT.” No one claims credit for these stunts, but they hold the public’s attention better than a protest or a march. Often, they feature Margaret’s words: “our missing hearts,” and she thinks of them like independent children, off leading their own lives without her. One day, she sends a postcard with a drawing of a cat beside a little door to her old address. She sends more, increasing the number of cats, hoping Ethan and Bird will follow the clues to her.

Margaret sets a date—three years since she left her family—on which to “do it.” Domi sets her up in the brownstone and she begins collecting bottle caps. Not long after, a librarian tells her she has found a re-placed child who ran away from her foster family in Cambridge. Margaret meets Sadie, who recognizes her and tells her she knows Bird. Sadie explains that after running away from her new family, she traveled to her old house in Baltimore, but her parents were gone. She then ran to New York and sought help at the library, having learned from Carina, the Cambridge librarian, that the library is tracking missing children. Margaret convinces Domi to take Sadie in until they can focus on finding her parents. Sadie gives Margaret the address for Ethan and Bird’s dorm, which is how she sent Bird’s letter.

In the present, Bird asks about Sadie. Margaret says he can see her soon, but she needed this time with him first. They hear someone enter the brownstone, but it is only Domi. She seems surprised that Margaret still intends to go through with her plan, now that Bird is here. (The plan’s details are still withheld.) Margaret insists. Tomorrow, Sadie and Bird will be taken somewhere safe while Margaret sets the plan in motion. Hesitantly, Bird agrees.