The Immortalists: Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

The narration flashes back to 1991, when the family gathers at Klara’s memorial service in San Francisco. Daniel and Mira just moved to Kingston. Mira started working at SUNY New Paltz, Daniel’s new job starts in a month, and he and Mira will be married in six months. Still, Daniel feels desolate. After the memorial, Daniel goes to a pub and weeps. He mutters that everyone is dying, and the man next to him commiserates with him. The man introduces himself as Eddie O’Donoghue and explains that he’s investigating Klara’s death with the FBI.

Daniel asks why the FBI is investigating Klara death. Eddie explains that he was in love with Klara. He tells the story of how he took Simon into the station, and then how he met up with Klara after one of her shows. Later, when he moved to Vegas, he saw her one day in a parking lot. He decided to go to her opening, and he got to the Mirage early. He followed her up the elevator and watched as she slipped into the penthouse. When she stayed in the room for a long time, he knocked on the door and shouted for her. Then he got a key from the front desk and found her hanging. He tried to perform CPR, but she was dead. Daniel asks not to hear any more.

Eddie asks Daniel if he has any suspicions about Klara’s death, prompting him about Raj. Daniel says he doesn’t really know Raj, but he always felt Raj was controlling. Daniel also mentions what happened with the fortune teller, acknowledging that it may be crazy to think she was involved somehow. Eddie says he’ll look into it, but six months later, Klara’s death is ruled a suicide. Daniel isn’t surprised, knowing the simplest hypothesis is usually right.

Fourteen years later, Daniel meets up with Eddie O’Donoghue once more. Eddie shows him pictures of the Costellos, a Romani family convicted of 14 federal crimes who ran a fortune-telling fraud. They often convinced vulnerable, sick, and grieving people that the best way to solve their problems was through buying the family’s remedies. When the family was found, their assets totaled $50 million, and they were convicted of grand larceny, tax evasion, and money laundering.

Eddie explains that one woman was not convicted and shows Daniel a picture of the fortune teller. Eddie says that she seems to be estranged from her family, but she does the same thing, working under aliases and traveling across the country. Eddie then tells Daniel that they’ve linked the fortune teller to five suicides, including Klara. Eddie asks if the woman said anything to push the idea on Daniel or Klara. Daniel says he never felt pressured, but he knows that Klara was a little unstable and believed what the woman said.

Daniel says that if the fortune teller had something to do with Klara and Simon’s deaths, then he also blames himself for bringing them to see the woman. Eddie replies that that’s blaming the victim. He notes that it must not have been easy for Daniel to hear his date of death, too. Daniel hasn’t forgotten his date—November 24th of this year—but he still thinks it is superstition. Eddie asks if the fortune teller predicted Simon’s death, too, and Daniel responds that he doesn’t know—Simon was a gay man living in San Francisco who contracted AIDS. Eddie thanks Daniel for his information and leaves.

Daniel drives home. He is disturbed by revisiting the story of the fortune teller in detail. He believes in choices and bad luck, and he doesn’t buy the woman’s claims. Still, the memory of the woman gives him anxiety. He has never told Mira about the experience, as he doesn’t want her to worry about him. And he doesn’t want Mira to think that he is like Klara: eccentric, unreasonable, and ill.