The Final Chapters

Mack has just buried Missy's body in the garden that Sarayu has been nurturing throughout the book, the garden of Mack's heart. Now, Papa says, there is a choice that must be made. Mack can remain at the shack/cabin with the three of them, or he can return to his wife and children. If Mack chooses to stay, he will soon see Missy. But if he leaves, he will also leave her behind.

Mack wonders what he can really accomplish if he returns home--if anything he does matters. Sarayu replies,

Mack, if anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again.

This reminds me of a story my mother told me growing up. A young child is walking along a beach that is strewn with thousands of starfish, picking them up one by one, and throwing them back into the ocean. A man watches the child for a while, then approaches the child and asks what she is doing. She says, "It's almost low tide. If I don't throw them back, they will be stranded here and die." The man tells her, "Look. There are thousands of starfish here. There's no way you can save all of them. There's no way you can make a difference." The girl simply smiled, turned away, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the ocean. As she walked away, she turned and said, "I made a difference to that one."

Mack chooses to return to his wife and children. Before he leaves, the three tell him that his daughter Kate thinks that Missy's death is her fault. Mack had never realized this before, and knows how much Kate's withdrawal and depression makes sense now.  He falls asleep on the floor, and wakes up back in the shack in its original state. On his way home, he is hit by a drunk driver, and the Jeep is completely destroyed.

He wakes up in the hospital, barely conscious and in much pain. When he is able to talk again, he tells his wife where he was and everything that happened there. At first, she attributes his story to his befuddled mind after the accident. But as he tells her more and more, and with increasing depth and vividness, "she quickly understood that whatever had happened had greatly impacted and changed her husband." They want to talk to Kate together, and tell her that it wasn't her fault that Missy was taken and killed. She said she thought this whole time that her parents blamed her. Her father's affirmation that it wasn't her fault is enough to break her down into broken tears. She climbs into the hospital bed with her father, snuggles close to him, and falls asleep in the safety of his arms. Nan looks at Mack, tears streaming down her face, and tells him she believes his story.

After Mack is released from the hospital, they call the sheriff of the town where Missy was murdered. Mack leads them to where Missy's body is, following the trail left by the Little Ladykiller, shown to him by Papa. Due to the discovery of this trail, authorities were able to recover the bodies of all the other children he had murdered.

This is a wonderful book, and I get something new out of it every time I read it. I would absolutely recommend it. For concluding remarks, I turn to the author:

If you ever get a chance to hang out with Mack, you will soon learn that he's hoping for a new revolution, one of love and kindness--a revolution that revolves around Jesus and what he did for us all and what he continues to do in anyone who has a hunger for reconciliation and a place to call home. This is not a revolution that will overthrow anything, or if it does, it will do so in ways we could never contrive in advance. Instead, it will be the quiet daily powers of dying and serving and loving and laughing, of simple tenderness and unseen kindness, because if anything matters, then everything matters.