49 pages • 1 hour read
Freida McFaddenThe Locked Door
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 38-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 38 Summary
Content Warning: This section contains graphic depictions of violence and mentions of death by suicide.
At the hospital the next day, Nora has the sensation of someone watching her. She is greeted by Henry Callahan, the former patient who made advances toward her at Christopher’s. Nora is shocked, having believed that Callahan was severely injured in an accident while following her. Callahan apologizes profusely for upsetting her and denies being in a car accident.
Nora confirms his story using medical records, then discovers that a man named William Bennett Jr. was admitted the night of the crash with severe trauma. She decides to visit him and discover why he followed her.
Chapter 39 Summary
Nora visits the surgical intensive care unit at her hospital, prepared to lie in order to see William Bennett Jr. She tells the nurse in charge that she promised to check in on Philip’s patients but doesn’t know which beds they’re in. While the nurse retrieves the information, Nora walks to the bed she knows is Bennett’s. He is badly bruised with a tube down his throat and a broken ankle. Nora notices that he is heavily sedated. She recognizes the man but can’t determine how she knows him. Nora leaves, wondering why he followed her and who sent him.
Chapter 40 Summary
Nora struggles to concentrate on her surgeries with the new knowledge that a stranger, William Bennett Jr., may be connected to the blood in her basement and the severed hand in her car.
While getting lunch, Nora is greeted by Mrs. Kellogg, the wife of her patient Arnold Kellogg. She announces that Arnold died peacefully in his sleep, upsetting Nora, who recognizes the bad timing of another patient dying. She wishes Arnold had suffered more. At the office, Nora brushes off the concerns of Harper and Sheila and decides to let Philip flirt with Harper if he wants.
Chapter 41 Summary
As Nora is leaving the office, she offers to walk Harper to her car, but Harper reveals that she’ll be walking out with Philip, who has asked her out for drinks. Nora impulsively texts Brady that she is nothing like her father, and he affirms her belief.
At home, Nora waits for the security system to be installed but finds that her appointment has been canceled. She texts Brady to ask if she can come over, and he agrees.
Chapter 42 Summary
Nora drives to Brady’s apartment, unsure of what she is expecting but confident that being with him will make her feel better. When she arrives, Mrs. Chelmsford is in front of the house with her niece, screaming about Brady abusing women. When Nora mentions Brady’s daughter as an explanation for the screams Mrs. Chelmsford hears, the niece says Brady doesn’t have a daughter. Nora begins to believe that Brady has been lying to her and that he murdered the women and is setting her up. When Brady approaches her, she pushes him away and drives off.
Chapter 43 Summary
Nora considers going to Detective Barber with her suspicions about Brady but knows she has limited evidence. She barricades herself inside her home and warms up a container of soup given to her by Harper. As she eats, she realizes that Brady could not have canceled her security system appointment.
Her suspicions turn toward Philip, who had access to patient records and glasses with her fingerprints. She wonders if he’s currently hurting Harper and calls Harper repeatedly. Nora decides to go find Harper after feeding her cat in the basement. As she enters, she finds a bloody body on the ground and a gun pointed at her chest.
Chapter 44 Summary: “26 Years Earlier”
The next day, Marjorie acts as if nothing has happened and ignores Nora at school. When Nora’s friends begin to tease Marjorie, Nora tells them to stop, threatening to intervene if they try again.
Nora is called to the principal’s office, and she knows her life is about to change forever. She does not react when the police tell her that her parents have been arrested, though she knows her principal is judging her reaction. She does cry when she learns Mandy Johansson is dead, feeling guilty that she acted too late.
Chapter 45 Summary
Nora finds Philip unconscious and tied up in her basement with his left hand severed. She tries to help, but Harper stops her with a gun. Harper reveals that William Bennett Jr. is her boyfriend and that he was helping Harper stalk and set up Nora as the murderer. Harper planned to turn Nora in the same way Nora turned in her father 26 years earlier.
Harper reveals that Aaron Nierling is also her father: Nora’s mother had been pregnant with Harper when she died by suicide, and somehow, Harper survived. Nora briefly overpowers Harper, disarming her. Brady enters, and Harper attempts to blame Nora for Philip’s state, but Brady turns the gun on her. Nora passes out.
Chapter 46 Summary
Nora wakes up in a hospital bed, unsure how she got there. A nurse tells her that Brady has been waiting to be let into her room since she arrived. Brady enters and explains that Nora seemed so disturbed when he saw her that he felt he had to check on her. He explains that he lied to his landlady about having a daughter in order to avoid paying extra rent. Brady reveals that Harper admitted to her crimes and has been arrested and that Philip is recovering. As Brady comforts her, Nora decides that she is done being too scared to pursue a relationship.
Epilogue Summary
One year later, Nora and Brady shop for groceries at a weekend farmer’s market. Nora and Brady are engaged, and Nora has grown to love Brady’s daughter, Ruby, whom she often spoils. Nora and Brady have recently put an offer in on a new house after Nora moved out of hers. Nora approaches a vendor whom she knows to be Marjorie, the girl she bullied as a child. Nora does not introduce herself but is glad to know that Marjorie’s life is happy. She vows to have a happy life herself.
The narrative switches to Harper’s perspective. Harper reveals that she saw Nora give Mrs. Kellogg a vial of calcium gluconate to kill her abusive husband. Harper decides to hold onto this information rather than report it to police.
Chapter 38-Epilogue Analysis
In the final section of The Locked Door, the novel’s falling action comes to a conclusion with a series of rapid-fire revelations about the novel’s central mystery and Nora’s past. Nora has two back-to-back revelations that turn out to be incorrect; these are followed by two more back-to-back revelations about Nora’s past that help to solve the murders.
The speed of these four consecutive revelations extends the novel’s pace to the final pages. In Chapter 42, Brady’s landlord’s niece tells Nora that Brady doesn’t have a daughter and lives alone. This news gives Nora a “sinking feeling in [her] stomach” and “a few things suddenly occur to [her]” (272): Brady had access to cups with her fingerprints at the bar, and she was followed home from the bar where he works. Nora’s reaction to the suggestion that Brady may have been lying is immediate and physical. As she puts together the pieces, Nora is shocked she never suspected Brady before, saying it’s “no mystery” at all that he is responsible.
However, Nora’s confidence that Brady is the killer lasts for only a few pages. After storming away from Brady’s house, Nora begins to question how Brady knew to cancel her security system installation appointment. As she realizes that only Philip knew about the meeting, Nora has “an uneasy feeling in [her] empty belly” and “another thought occurs to [her]” (278): Philip also had access to patient records and coffee mugs with her fingerprints. The use of the phrase “occur to me” in this passage echoes McFadden’s use of the phrase in Nora’s earlier revelation that Brady was the killer, tying the two moments together. The fact that Nora’s discomfort is located in her stomach in both passages also connects these two revelations. McFadden uses these echoes to connect Nora’s back-to-back revelations and suggest that she is also mistaken in suggesting that Philip is the murderer.
These two false revelations are followed in the novel’s penultimate chapter by two major revelations about Nora’s life, which once again raise The Tensions Between Nature and Nurture. The first of these revelations is that Harper is Nora’s sister. The second is that Nora reported her father’s crimes to the police, resulting in his arrest. For Harper, these two pieces of information are intertwined. This is reflected in the fact that McFadden reveals them in the same moment, as Harper explains to Nora: “[O]ur mother was five months pregnant when you called the police on our father [and] that’s why she killed herself” (290). Although these revelations are rooted in Nora’s past, they also help to explain the murders occurring in her present: Harper is targeting Nora because, as Aaron Nierling’s daughter, she is furious that Nora would turn Aaron in. The rapid-fire pace of these final revelations—which lead to the revelation that Harper is the killer—echoes the speed of Nora’s earlier, incorrect beliefs that Brady and Philip were responsible.
This rapid-fire structure allows McFadden to sustain the novel’s pace and mystery until the final pages. In the final childhood chapters, 11-year-old Nora decides not to hurt Marjorie and to turn her father in, redeeming her character after earlier suggestions that she might be violent like her father. However, in the novel’s final pages, Harper’s narration reveals that Nora gave an abusive patient’s wife the means to kill him. As Harper says, “[S]he’s responsible for his death [and] it didn’t bother her at all. Not even a little bit” (308). This final reveal in the novel’s closing pages leaves open the possibility of a sequel, implying once more that Nora is not as innocent as she hopes to be.
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