The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: Chapter 4: March 1964 Summary & Analysis

Caroline, still stuck in the grocery store parking lot, retrieves Phoebe from the car and goes around to the back of the store, hoping to find a way in—but she is unsuccessful. She kicks at the back door, hurting her toe, and hears a man’s voice tell her that no one is left inside. Caroline turns around and sees a large man in a bulky coat standing at the foot of the loading dock. Slightly frightened, she explains her situation—that she is alone with a newborn baby, and her car has stalled out. The man calmly explains that he's a trucker who just finished making a delivery to the store an hour or so ago and has been waiting for the weather to let up. He offers to let Caroline and the baby sit for a while in the warmth of his truck. Reluctant but desperate, Caroline agrees.

The trucker helps Caroline get some things from her own car and then settle into the cab of his truck. Caroline feeds Phoebe some formula, and she drinks hungrily. The trucker and Caroline make small talk—he reveals he’s from Akron, Ohio but has been on the road for over five years. Caroline asks the man if he gets lonely—he says it is a lonely life, but he is grateful that on strange nights like tonight, he sometimes gets to “meet someone unexpected.” Caroline feels herself relax, and is no longer afraid that the man would ever hurt her or Phoebe.

After determining that they are both on their way to Lexington, but were derailed by the accident and the snow, the trucker offers to give Caroline a ride home. She agrees, and they set out. Caroline is grateful for the company of this man, whose name, she learns as they drive on, is Albert Simpson, or Al. Caroline is doubly grateful that Al knows nothing about her—or her precarious situation.

Back at her apartment complex, Al helps Caroline bring her things inside from the truck. She can see one of her nosy neighbors, Lucy Martin, spying on her through the curtain of her living room. Caroline feels a sense of “vertigo” as she thinks about how completely different her life feels just since she last left the apartment. Once inside, Caroline—in spite of the part of her that still believes Al could be “a serial killer, or a rapist, or a con man”—invites Al to spend the night in her apartment rather than out in the cold in his truck. Al asks if Caroline has a husband—she lies and says she’s divorced.

In the morning, Caroline wakes to the smell of bacon frying—Al is making breakfast in the kitchen. Phoebe is still asleep, and Caroline makes small talk with Al. She says she’s thinking of moving to Pittsburgh—the words surprise her even as they come out of her mouth. Al invites Caroline and Phoebe to come to Nashville with him—but Caroline says she has things to “settle” in Lexington before she moves on. After breakfast, Al leaves—Caroline wistfully watches him go, fighting the temptation to run after him.

Over the weekend, Caroline tends carefully to Phoebe, adjusting to the schedule of having a baby. On Monday, she calls in sick to work before entertaining a visit from the gossipy Lucy Martin—Caroline deflects Lucy’s attention by explaining that she had a cousin whose wife is in the hospital come to stay. She claims that the baby is his, and she’s only watching it for him. Caroline is shocked by how proficiently and easy she’s able to spin a lie.

As the days go by, Caroline revels in the peaceful time she spends with Phoebe—she is beginning to “fall in love” with the baby, even as she tells herself that something will soon swoop in to tear them apart. She believes that David Henry will soon come to collect Phoebe and “do the right thing.” One morning, though, as Caroline reads the newspaper, she spots an announcement for Phoebe’s memorial service—it is scheduled for the following day. Shocked, she calls the clinic and tells the receptionist to have Dr. Henry call her.

An hour later, David comes over to Caroline’s apartment. He explains that Norah arranged the service and placed the ad without telling him. Caroline tells David he can’t possibly let his wife go on thinking that her daughter is dead. She confesses that she was unable to leave Phoebe at the “awful” facility in Louisville, and has been watching over her all week. David admits that he never saw the group home in person, and had only heard of it.

Caroline begs David to tell Norah the truth, but he shakes his head and tells her it’s “too late now.” Caroline feels a hatred for David, but also knows that they now share a “great intimacy.” She senses genuine pain and confusion in David as he tells Caroline that Phoebe is now in her hands—he warns her that the child will need medical care as she gets older, but that if she wants to take her for herself, she can. He also grimly tells Caroline he’ll understand if she calls the authorities—or Norah—to tell the truth. He gives Caroline three hundred dollars in cash for Phoebe’s care, and before leaving, asks her to “warn” him before she does anything that might tear his life apart.

After David leaves, Caroline has no desire to go to the authorities—as she looks around her drab apartment, she decides that all she wants to do is leave and start over somewhere new. Caroline begins making arrangements to have her furniture given to Goodwill, her newspaper delivery and utilities stopped, and her bank accounts closed. She gets her car back, and, in the morning, packs it up and sets out.

Before leaving town, though, Caroline stops briefly at the church to look in on the memorial service. Holding Phoebe in her arms, she approaches the door of the church. She sees Norah crying and wonders if she should step forward with Phoebe and tell the truth. She prepares herself to do just that, but can’t make herself do it. Instead, she turns and goes back to her car, tucking Phoebe into her little box in the backseat. She begins the drive to Pittsburgh, feeling “reckless” and excited—she and Phoebe are both “vanishing from the face of the earth.”