The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: Chapter 18: April 1982 Summary & Analysis

Norah is at work, preparing to greet a big client with Bree, who also works at the agency, when she receives a call from a former lover—a man with whom she had a brief tryst six months ago. She orders him not to call her anymore, and in spite of his protestations that he cares for her deeply, dismisses him. Norah has had four affairs since Howard. Norah’s lover tells her he’s worried about Paul, and she hangs up. Paul has been missing for twenty-four hours, having stolen a neighbor’s car and driven off. The car turned up in Louisville last night, but there’s still no sign of Paul. Norah feels that Paul’s disappearance is a kind of “punishment” for her and David’s anger with one another.

Norah’s phone rings again—this time, it’s David, calling to tell her that Paul has been found shoplifting cheese in Louisville. David says he’s driving down to collect Paul from the police station, and Norah asks for the address so that she can go, too. Bree, overhearing the phone call, volunteers to drive Norah.

As Bree and Norah make their way through town, Norah admits feeling embarrassed for being so worried about Paul—after all, he’s eighteen, and in just a few months he’ll be off at college anyway. The sisters drive the rest of the way to Louisville in near silence. Bree, who has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, remarks that she feels like “things seem different,” and a change is coming. Norah says she’s afraid to lose Bree, but Bree promises Norah she’ll be fine—she is, she says, on the prayer list at church. Norah reflects on her sister’s newly-minted fascination with religion, noting that Bree has been going to church now for just over a year.

Norah and Bree arrive at the police station and see Paul waiting on a bench in the main room. He is sweaty and unshowered, but Norah rushes to him and embraces him. Paul looks at Norah and Bree and remarks that he’s “lucky” his father hasn’t come to get him—Norah, though, says that David is on his way. Paul asks if he’s going to jail, and Norah says she hopes he doesn’t have to.

David arrives at the station next—he envelops Paul in a huge hug right away, to Norah’s surprise. An officer approaches them and tells them that, although he’d like to throw the “smart-aleck” Paul “in the slammer,” his neighbors aren’t pressing charges, and he is free to go. David grows stern, then, telling Paul that he will need to pay their neighbors every cent it is going to cost to repair their damaged car. David tells Paul that he's not allowed to see friends or play music for the rest of the year. Paul retorts that he’d rather “be dead” than give up music, and won’t come home if he’s not allowed to practice with his friends. Paul’s parents don’t respond, and he bitterly says that his dead sister has things better than he does.

Norah slaps Paul across the face. David warns him not to continue saying things he’ll “regret for the rest of [his] life.” David turns to Norah and suggests they leave Paul to spend a night in jail after all, but Norah retorts that she will not lose “another” child. David apologizes for “fail[ing]” Norah and Paul, and storms out.

Bree leads Norah and Paul to the car, and the three of them drive back towards Lexington—but after a while on the highway, Bree exits and takes a detour into the countryside, explaining that she wants to take Norah and Paul on an “adventure” to find a famous nearby abbey. Norah points out that Bree doesn’t even have a map—but then considers her statement, and realizes that, for all the “maps” she and David have had all their lives, they’ve still ended up in the wilderness.

Bree stops at a nearby church to ask for directions to the remote abbey. Norah follows Bree inside while Paul waits in the car. Sitting in a pew to rest and think, Norah begins crying, confronted with memories of the loss of Phoebe. She knows that she has lost David forever—and is risking losing Paul, too.

After collecting herself, Norah heads back outside, where Bree and Paul are waiting for her. Paul apologizes for the horrible thing he said, and Norah accepts his apology—but warns him to never again “think [his] life” isn’t worth anything. The three of them get back in the car and continue driving down the road towards the abbey, which Bree says isn’t far.

After a few minutes, Bree, Norah, and Paul arrive at the Abbey of Gethsemani and can hear bells calling monks to prayer through the car windows. As they get out to look around, Paul reaches into his pocket and pulls out some small rocks—fossils, just like the ones he loved so many years ago. He shows them to Norah and tells her that while she was in the church he collected some off the ground. Norah remembers the day Paul broke his arm and thinks about “how hard David had worked to make things good for all of them”—and yet never could surmount the strange difficulty at the heart of their family, which made them all seem to be “swimming the shallow sea that once had covered all this land.”