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.
Chapters 19-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “26 Years Earlier”
Content Warning: This section contains graphic depictions of violence.
Nora pushes open the door to the basement. She is shocked to see no woodworking projects, just tools and cleaning supplies. She smells something decomposing and hears a muffled noise from a crate covered in a sheet. She lifts the sheet and realizes that it is covering a cage. She sees a blue eye looking back at her. Suddenly, her father enters and asks what she thinks about the basement. Before Nora can respond, Aaron explains that Nora is like him and that he wants to teach her. Nora agrees, and Aaron tells her to go back to bed. He promises that their lessons will begin soon.
Chapter 20 Summary
As Nora prepares to leave work, she thinks again about the similarities between her father and herself and wonders if Detective Barber sees her as a suspect. Harper invites Nora for a night out with her roommate, but Nora declines. Nora realizes that Harper has dark hair and blue eyes like her father’s victims and her dead patients. She encourages Harper to be careful.
Nora visits Christopher’s rather than going home. She hopes Brady isn’t working but is disappointed when she doesn’t see him behind the bar. When her drink is disappointing, Brady appears and fixes it. She asks him to take her home again, and he enthusiastically agrees.
Chapter 21 Summary
After having sex with Brady, Nora agrees to stay and have dinner with him. Brady suggests they watch a movie, and she is relieved to hear that he no longer watches slasher films. When a news report mentions the death of Shelby Gillis, Brady compares the murder to those of Aaron Nierling, upsetting Nora. She considers leaving, but he convinces her to stay.
On her way to the bathroom, Nora passes the locked door and remembers Mrs. Chelmsford’s warning about Brady. Desperate to know whether Brady is a dangerous liar like her father, she opens the door. She is shocked by what she sees and feels Brady’s body behind her before she can speak.
Chapter 22 Summary
Behind the locked door in Brady’s apartment is the bedroom of a young girl. Brady explains that he shares custody of his five-year-old daughter, Ruby. Nora is hurt by the lie of omission and tries to leave. Brady explains that he thought she wanted to be a one-night stand and didn’t feel right bringing up his daughter after such a casual encounter. Nora suspects that Brady is afraid of her and that, although that fear initially drew him to her, he doesn’t want her near his daughter. As she leaves Brady’s apartment, she sees Mrs. Chelmsford rocking alone on the porch and vows never to return.
Chapter 23 Summary
The next day, Nora is distracted by news of the murders, which is all over radio and television. Reporters explicitly compare the murders to those of Aaron Nierling.
When Nora arrives at her office, she is dismayed to see Philip and Harper flirting. Harper was not born at the time of the Nierling murders, but Philip correctly points out that Nora was living in Oregon at the time. Nora denies it.
Nora receives messages from Brady and Detective Barber and ignores both. Her first patient of the day is the mother of Amber Swanson, who booked under a fake name. She calls Nora by the last name Nierling.
Chapter 24 Summary
Nora insists that she had nothing to do with the death of Amber Swanson, pointing to the fact that she recently saved Amber’s life. Mrs. Swanson rejects Nora’s explanations, calling Nora a liar and demanding to know if she has any additional information about Amber’s death. When Nora hesitates, thinking about the letter from her father, Mrs. Swanson notices and immediately calls her a murderer. She throws medical supplies at Nora and threatens her. Nora thinks about the scalpel in her scrubs pocket. As Mrs. Swanson leaves, she vows to go to the media. Nora is terrified at the thought of people knowing who she is.
Chapter 25 Summary: “26 Years Earlier”
The next morning, the basement door is locked again. Nora turns the TV to the news rather than the cartoons she usually watches and soon sees a report about Mandy Johansson, a missing girl with dark hair and blue eyes. Nora realizes that Mandy is in her basement. She turns off the TV as her father enters and equivocates when he asks if she wants to return to the basement that night. Later, Nora’s mother vomits when Nora repeats the news story about the missing girl.
After school, Nora convinces Marjorie to play a game called Hunter and Prey on the abandoned trail on the way to Marjorie’s house.
Chapter 26 Summary
Brady is waiting for Nora after work. He apologizes and insists he only lied because he thought she hated children. Nora discovers her tires are slashed and agrees to let Brady drive her home.
When they arrive, Detective Barber is there with another officer. He asks to look around Nora’s home. Nora considers letting him in since she has nothing to hide, but Brady tells Barber that he can’t search without a warrant. Barber leaves, and Nora tells Brady the truth about her father. Brady asks whether she murdered her patients. Hurt and disturbed that he could see her that way, Nora asks him to leave.
Chapter 27 Summary
Nora is relieved when the stray cat reappears at her back door but panics when the cat pushes its way inside. She tries to pick it up, and the feeling of the cat’s fragile ribs unnerves her. Desperate to get the cat out, she calls Philip for help. Her obvious panic concerns him, and he begs her to explain why she’s been acting strange. Nora breaks into tears for the first time in decades. She asks Philip for a lawyer recommendation but refuses to say why. After Philip leaves, Nora follows the stray cat into her basement, where she discovers a pool of blood. She decides to clean it up rather than report it.
Chapters 19-27 Analysis
In this section of The Locked Door, Nora’s characterization develops in significant ways by once more exploring The Tensions Between Nature and Nurture. The chapters narrated by 11-year-old Nora confirm the novel’s earlier foreshadowing that Nora is not as innocent as she appears in her adult chapters. In Chapter 19, Nora finds someone caged in her father’s unlocked basement and realizes that her father “wanted [her] to come down here […] he wanted [her] to see this” (132). Nora’s immediate understanding of her father’s intentions suggests that, even at age 11, she shares his thinking patterns. Nora’s father understands that Nora is like him, telling her, “[O]ut of everyone in the world […] I thought that you would understand” (132). These passages suggest that Nora may share her father’s sadistic tendencies. The depiction of Nora as a violent child complicates the picture of innocence that adult Nora is trying to present to readers and the investigators.
Nora’s relationship with the stray cat hanging around her house also complicates her portrayal. After the cat runs into the house, Nora yells out, “[Y]ou’re not allowed in here!” (184), echoing her earlier assertion that she “can’t have a cat” (69). Nora’s rule is explained by her reaction to the feeling of “the bones of her rib cage under [her] palms” (184): Nora thinks that “they’re so fragile compared to human ribs […] they would snap so easily” (184). The fact that Nora’s first thought is violent suggests that the “bad luck with hamsters” that she referred to earlier in the novel may have been intentional violence (28). The slow release of clues about Nora’s childhood complicates her portrayal as an innocent and reliable protagonist.
Despite these hints about Nora’s similarity to her father, Nora also shows moments of compassion and emotional vulnerability in these chapters. Nora is relieved when the cat reappears after going missing for a few days, referring to the cat as “[her] only friend” (183). When she first allows herself to pet the cat, she describes the sensation as “comforting” (183). These signs of tenderness suggest that Nora may be growing softer and more vulnerable despite the violence surrounding her.
Nora’s acceptance of her feelings for Brady also shows emotional growth. Although she claims to want to avoid Brady at Christopher’s, she admits that “a small part of [her] is disappointed” when she doesn’t see him (138). Later, she gives him five minutes to talk to her and is “a bit confused” when he agrees to stop talking at that point (172), admitting, “[W]hen he gave in, I felt a deep sting of disappointment” (172). Similarly, when Brady leaves after learning the truth about Nora’s connection to the murders, Nora confesses, “I want him to argue with me and beg me to let him stay” (181). These passages highlight Nora’s growing understanding that she is attracted to Brady and interested in allowing herself to be vulnerable with him.
The structure of this section reflects the novel’s interest in The Lasting Effects of Childhood Trauma. Chapter 19 concludes the cliffhanger ending of Chapter 16, in which Nora opens her father’s unlocked door to the basement to find a torture chamber. This moment is mirrored by the cliffhanger between Chapters 21 and 22, in which Nora opens an unlocked door at Brady’s house and finds his daughter’s bedroom. The repetition of this crucial moment—Nora opening a previously unlocked door—demonstrates the lasting trauma of Nora’s childhood experiences as she quite literally repeats her mistakes. The scene with Brady has a hopeful twist, with his daughter’s room offering an optimistic alternative to the torture dungeon.
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By Freida McFadden
