47 pages • 1-hour read
Finding Grace
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Chapters 13-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes illness, death, and sexual content.
Chapter 13 Summary
Before finding Dunkirk’s profile, Honor reviewed countless egg donor profiles. She wanted to find someone who resembled her as closely as possible. At first, Tom was engaged in the process. However, he was fed up by the time Honor found Dunkirk, so she “kept the details” about her to herself (162).
On a cold November day, Tom takes a hike with Grace and the other Sunday Blues girls. (The narrator, Honor, is surprised because Tom never liked the outdoors.) Grace charges ahead, delighting in the air and scenery. Then Blanche falls. Everyone is worried. Blanche gets upset when Grace fusses over her. She tells Tom they’ve only kept on with Sunday Blues for Grace—hoping she’d eventually overcome her grief and move on—but after six years, Grace hasn’t gone on a date or branched out. After the outing, Tom invites Grace over for an official date; she accepts.
Chapter 14 Summary
Tom cooks dinner for Grace. They chat and drink wine while Henry sleeps upstairs. Grace exclaims when she sees a note written by Henry and recognizes he’s left-handed like her. Tom lies and says Honor was also left-handed. Then they chat about Sprezzatura.
After dinner and cake, Grace heads to the bathroom, running into Henry in the hall. Tom observes them from afar, delighted by their interaction. After Henry is asleep again, Tom and Grace enjoy more cake and have sex.
Chapter 15 Summary
Honor is glad Tom is sleeping with someone new, which surprises her.
Tom and Grace wake up in bed together. Tom is overcome by her beauty and thrilled by their night together. They get up and have breakfast with Henry. Tom is pleased by how well she and Henry get along.
Annie shows up. Tom forgot she was supposed to pick up Henry today. She is irked by Grace’s presence. When Grace steps out of the room, she overhears Annie scolding Tom about having her over. She reminds him that Grace isn’t Henry’s mom and warns him that there will be repercussions for his carelessness.
Annie leaves with Henry. Grace tells Tom not to worry—she would never try to replace Honor. They profess their love for each other.
Chapter 16 Summary
Tom and Grace continue seeing each other over the next three months. They fall into a routine together and start skipping Sunday lunches at Annie’s. One day, they visit a bookstore where Honor used to sell books and give readings. Grace notices Honor’s books for sale and suggests they start reading the titles to Henry. Her demeanor changes when she sees a photo of Honor signing books with her right hand. Tom lies and says she was ambidextrous.
On the drive, Tom worries about his lies. He is serious about Grace and fears she suspects his dishonesty. Grace interrupts his thoughts, flipping through a book she bought and remarking on the Baudelaire poem he and Honor used to love. Grace explains her relationship to the poem, admitting she read it for her egg donation interview CD. Tom doesn’t explain his relationship with the poem.
A call from Arcot House—his mother Judith’s nursing home—interrupts the conversation. He asks Grace if she’d accompany him to a visit; Judith has dementia, but today is a good day. In the Arcot parking lot, he explains that Judith doesn’t know the truth about Honor and Chloe. He thought it’d be too much to tell her, given her condition. Grace is understanding and plays along during the visit when Judith calls her Honor. Tom doesn’t correct her, but he worries about what Grace is thinking.
Chapter 17 Summary
One morning, Honor was getting Chloe ready for school when Lauren stopped over in a state of duress. She’d recently discovered that Daniel was cheating on but just learned he had a child with his lover, too. Honor urged her to contact her lawyer, promising to care for her twins while she handled the situation.
In the present, Grace picks up Henry from school one day and runs into Lauren. Lauren is offended to learn that Tom sent Grace to collect Henry instead of her. She seems upset witnessing Grace and Henry’s connection, too.
On Easter Sunday, Colette shows up at Tom’s house, to his and Grace’s surprise; Tom “managed to forget” she was coming (208). Colette is taken by Grace, remarking on her resemblance to Honor and staying throughout the day. Later, Grace confronts Tom; she asks if he is only with her because she is Honor’s doppelganger. He promises he loves her for her.
Tom, Lauren, Grace, Colette, and the kids attend a local Easter egg hunt. At Lauren’s house afterward, Lauren and Grace find themselves chatting alone. Lauren starts talking rapidly about Honor and Tom’s attempts to have a second child and their work with egg donors. Grace is surprised, admitting Tom never told her. Lauren begs her not to tell Tom the information came from her. Honor wonders what’s going on, as this behavior seems unusual for Lauren.
Chapter 18 Summary
Honor was still young when Colette brought her to boarding school. She initially didn’t understand where they were going or why. She felt suddenly like an inconvenience to her mother.
Grace takes Tom aside and confronts him about his egg donation secret. She demands to know why he didn’t tell her, especially given that she opened up about donating her eggs after Pietro’s death. A flustered Tom lies and says that Honor was the one who handled the donor concerns, and he didn’t know much about it. Grace keeps pressing him about keeping things from her. He insists he is being honest, and they profess their love.
That evening, Grace and Tom go to the shop for Sunday Blues. Colette agrees to stay with Henry. When they arrive at Sprezzatura, the shop is out of power. Tom invites the group back to his house. Colette heads upstairs when they arrive. She takes off her shirt in the bathroom, exposing the mastectomy scars on her chest.
Honor is shocked, realizing Colette sent her to boarding school because she was sick. She reflects on how this secret dictated her life.
Chapters 13-18 Analysis
Tom’s developing relationship with Grace underscores the novel’s thematic explorations of the Moral Challenges of Owning the Truth. The longer Tom and Grace are together, the more resistant Tom becomes to telling Grace the truth. Their time together draws them into a deeper intimacy. As they fall in love, Grace opens up to Tom more and more. However, Tom is reluctant “to go digging for information” about Grace’s past “when he [is] omitting such a whopper” about his story and real connection to Grace (171). His lie becomes a trap he can’t escape, and it becomes increasingly entrapping the longer he avoids the truth. When Grace mentions donating her eggs, for example, Tom remains silent. When Grace asks about Honor being right-handed and about reading her books to Henry, Tom tells more lies or skirts the topic altogether. When Grace demands to know why Tom kept the truth about Henry being “made using an egg donor,” Tom brushes it off, insisting “[a]ll that egg donor stuff was Honor’s territory” (222). One lie leads to another. Over time, Tom’s seemingly idyllic relationship becomes founded on a series of falsehoods and secrets. His past continues to shadow his chances at a new life because he is not owning the truth about what he experienced and why he came into Grace’s life. Honesty creates pathways to healing and love, while lying and deception threaten a sustainable relationship and future for Tom.
Tom’s ongoing involvement with Grace also furthers the novel’s theme of the Emotional Complexities of Grief and Loss. Grace is not so different from Tom. She suffered a serious loss and has struggled to confront and move past it. Tom and Grace’s hike with the Sunday Blues reveals the intensity of Grace’s sorrow, which provides insight into Tom’s own grieving and healing process. Blanche’s physical fall on the hike creates an opportunity for emotional openness and vulnerability between the Sunday Blues group members. Frustrated, Blanche reveals that she has been attending the Sunday Blues “week after week, under false pretenses, trying to shake Grace back to life” (167). She and the Sunday Blues girls have already moved beyond their losses but have continued attending the grief group in an attempt to usher Grace towards healing. “Hanging around with us lot every Sunday doesn’t do it,” Blanches tells Tom of the healing process, “You can’t boycott grief, unless you want to boycott happiness with it” (167). Blanche’s words offer insight into both Tom’s and Grace’s experiences. Like Grace, Tom has been ignoring his grief in hopes that it will simply go away. Like Grace, he has wanted to move on with his life before fully acknowledging the truth of his loss. Honor’s and Chloe’s deaths have robbed him of his purpose, meaning, and happiness; by ignoring his symptoms, he deludes himself into believing he has recovered from his loss. Just like Grace, however, Tom’s avoidant habits only intensify his internal unrest.
Despite Tom’s unresolved grief and string of lies, his relationship with Grace does offer him an opportunity for Finding Love After Loss: “After all those nights of ordering takeaways alone, or eating Henry’s leftover fish fingers” (171), he revels in his newfound connection with Grace. Even navigating “the vast array of emotions” associated with their new love doesn’t intimidate Tom (171). Rather, being with Grace is a portal to the future. Grace is not only earnest, open, kind, and gracious but she also forms a ready connection with Tom’s son, mother-in-law, and mother. Her presence enriches Tom’s life and offers him a chance at redemption. Because Honor is the first-person narrator, her observations and depictions of Tom and Grace’s relationship underscore the authenticity and intensity of their connection. In the dinner date scene from Chapter 14, Honor describes Tom’s demeanor, remarking that he once “looked at me just like this. He listened. He was fully present. He was interested. He was falling” (173). Honor has insight into Tom’s psyche because of their history together. She is able to access his complex emotions even before he knows how to name them. Her perspective authenticates the notion that falling in love again is possible; a second chance at love can also provide a gateway to healing. This is another reason Tom is so afraid of telling Grace the truth: He doesn’t want to jeopardize what he and Grace have and risk destroying the future they are building together.
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