Thornbird
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Chapters 28-36Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide, graphic violence, and death.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Keep Your Secrets, Ryan”
Zed introduces Ryan to Natalie Singh, Lydia Singh's daughter, who remains desperate to know the location of her mother’s body. The encounter leaves Ryan overwhelmed with guilt.
Agent Foster arrives and apologizes for his previously aggressive demeanor, admitting that this is his first major case. Ryan shows him the threatening text message she received from an unknown number claiming to know her real identity. Though Foster suspects it’s a prank, he offers to have his tech team investigate. He then suggests that Ryan might have repressed memories of her father’s crimes and proposes she undergo a hypnosis session with an FBI-approved therapist. Ryan agrees.
As she leaves the meeting, Chase sees her with Foster and scornfully assumes they are on a date. Ryan asks Chase for a late-night ride to her family’s abandoned property, using the reward money as a pretext to search for clues. He agrees to pick her up at midnight.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Make Wise Choices”
Later that night, during their walk through the woods to her father’s old art studio, Ryan tells Chase about her dream of becoming a nature photographer. Chase uses Ryan’s camera to take a candid shot of her, capturing a genuine smile.
The search of the studio and house proves fruitless and is interrupted when Deputy Price arrives, alerted by their flashlights. To avoid getting in trouble, Chase kisses Ryan. The deputy assumes they are just teenagers hooking up and lets them go with a warning. Afterward, Ryan confronts Chase about the kiss, and he doesn’t deny that he enjoyed it.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Partner in Crime”
During lunch at school, Ty and Kab announce their theory that the victims’ bodies are in Sturgeon Lake and that the original police searches were inadequate. They make plans to investigate the area during a bonfire the next night. Later, Zed asks Ryan to take photos for the mid-year yearbook video, and she agrees.
After school, Agent Foster picks Ryan up for her hypnosis appointment in Nashville. On the drive, Foster scoffs at the teenagers’ lake theory, insisting the FBI conducted extremely thorough water searches and that nothing is in the lake. He reiterates that Ryan is the only person who might be able to provide the new evidence needed to solve the case.
Chapter 31 Summary: “I Don’t Want to Be Here”
Ryan meets with the psychiatrist, Dr. Wilmer. Under hypnosis, she relives a traumatic childhood memory of being with her mother in Gabriel’s studio. In the vision, her mother notices a loose floorboard, discovers Gabriel’s sketches of his victims, and slips something into her pocket before hurrying them out. Ryan also recalls fragmented moments from the night of her mother’s murder, hearing her mother scream at Gabriel about finding blood on the sketchbooks. The session ends without revealing the location of the bodies, leaving Ryan deeply disappointed and emotionally drained.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Floating”
Ryan reluctantly attends a bonfire party at the lake with her cousins. She and Chase share a tense, flirtatious moment before Everett interrupts and asks her to dance. Later, Ryan feels a pang of anger when she sees Sofia, Everett’s ex-girlfriend, sitting flirtatiously on Chase’s lap. Ryan turns her attention to the dark water, sees a pale, floating shape, and is convinced it is a human body.
Chapter 33 Summary: “The Right Place”
Ryan wades into the lake, shouting that she has found a body, only to realize it is a piece of driftwood tangled with weeds. Everett grabs her shoulder in the water and yanks her backward to shore, where other partygoers mock her. Humiliated and overwhelmed, Ryan flees down the beach to be alone. Chase finds her and offers comfort, giving her his hoodie to wear. Since she doesn’t want to go home and face her family, he offers to take her to his house instead.
At Chase’s house, Ryan takes a shower while he puts her wet clothes in the dryer. Afterward, she breaks down crying in the living room. Chase comforts her without judgment, and they connect over their shared feelings of being outsiders. The emotional intimacy leads to a passionate kiss, and they become intimate for the first time. With Chase, Ryan experiences the unfamiliar feeling that she is in “the right place” (314).
Chapter 34 Summary: “Even If It’s Messy”
The next morning, Ryan wakes in Chase’s bed and quickly texts Mar, who agrees to provide an alibi. Ryan then lies to her worried aunt and uncle, claiming she fell asleep at Mar’s house.
Ryan spends Thanksgiving with the Shipleys while exchanging flirtatious texts with Chase. The next day, she goes to work at the animal shelter, where JP says Ryan reminds him of his wife, Leah. When Ryan asks his opinion on Chase, JP confirms that, beneath his bad-boy exterior, he is loyal and honest.
Chapter 35 Summary: “Happy Holidays, Gabrielle”
On Christmas Day, Ryan spends time with Chase, and they sleep together again. As Ryan is leaving, Georgia Hedlund, Chase’s mother, arrives home from her night shift and meets Ryan for the first time. The quiet moment is shattered when Ryan receives a text from her anonymous harasser: “Happy holidays, Gabrielle” (332). She hides the message from Chase, pretending it’s a text from her aunt.
Chapter 36 Summary: “A History of Murder”
The new semester starts and, as his boyfriend is working, Connor persuades Ryan to be his date to the school’s Valentine’s Day dance. At the dance, Everett confronts Ryan about her emotional coldness, but she deflects. Chase then makes a surprise appearance, telling Ryan he came just to see her. Their conversation is cut short when the lights dim for the mid-year yearbook video. Instead of the student project, a different video begins, produced by Zed’s “Free the Sparrows” podcast. Zed’s voice narrates over images of the town, promising to reveal a long-held secret about Starling’s “history of murder.”
Chapters 28-36 Analysis
Agent Foster’s suggestion that Ryan undergo hypnosis introduces a fraught method of truth-seeking that prioritizes forensic utility over Ryan’s psychological well-being. Ryan’s skepticism underscores the practice's controversial history and its potential for “planting false suggestions” (269). Instead of uncovering the logistical “what”—the location of the bodies—the hypnosis forces Ryan to relive the traumatic “why”—the moment her mother discovered Gabriel’s sketches under a loose floorboard and the subsequent confrontation that led to her murder. The experience fails to retrieve objective evidence while reactivating a deep personal wound for Ryan, reflected in her plea, “I don’t want to be here” (297). Her journey illustrates the theme of Self-Discovery in the Shadow of a Dark Family Past, suggesting that understanding her history requires confronting its emotional core as well as unearthing cold facts. The narrative engages with the real-world complexities of forensic hypnosis, which in the “Memory Wars” of the late 20th century proved more effective as a therapeutic tool for accessing buried trauma than as a reliable method for factual recall.
The section contrasts the official, institutional investigation with the amateur sleuthing that consumes Starling, exposing the limitations and ethical failures of both. Agent Foster scornfully dismisses “teenagers, [and] untrained civilians believing they can find things we didn't” (291), asserting the superiority of the bureau’s methods. Yet his entire strategy hinges on a teenager's repressed memories. This irony highlights the stagnation of the formal investigation, which has become dependent on the very person whose trauma it fails to fully acknowledge. At the other extreme, Zed’s actions represent the dangerous potential of the modern true-crime phenomenon. Driven by a desire for notoriety, he manipulates Ryan into taking photos for a yearbook video he then hijacks for his own exposé. His promise to reveal the town’s “history of murder” at the Valentine’s dance demonstrates the reckless harm that can be inflicted when real people at the center of a case are treated as narrative devices. The sparrow logo that appears on the screen visually connects the bird motif to this predatory exposure, twisting an image of freedom into one of surveillance and exploitation.
Amid the external pressures of the investigation and the internal turmoil of her past, Ryan’s developing relationship with Chase offers a private sanctuary. Their connection begins when Chase takes her camera and, in a moment of playful intimacy, photographs her. By capturing a “pure, genuine smile” (330) she rarely allows herself, Chase breaks down Ryan’s defenses, demonstrating that he sees beneath her carefully-controlled veneer. Their subsequent performative kiss in front of Deputy Price quickly deepens into genuine emotional and physical intimacy. Chase’s house becomes a rare space of safety where Ryan can be vulnerable without judgment, and in his arms, she feels for the first time that she is in “the right place” (314). He offers a quiet comfort that contrasts with Everett’s constant questioning, fulfilling her need for acceptance rather than answers. This bond, forged in their shared feeling of being outsiders, introduces the theme of Seeing Love as a Light in the Darkness. However, this connection is immediately shadowed by The Cost of Keeping Secrets as their relationship is founded on betraying Everett. Furthermore, the arrival of the anonymous text, “Happy holidays, Gabrielle” (332), shatters Ryan’s fragile sense of security.
The narrative uses different locations to create a geography of safety and danger, mapping Ryan’s internal state onto her physical surroundings. The abandoned Thorn property is a sterile, stripped-down landscape of trauma, offering only the ghost of a past she cannot fully access. Sturgeon Lake becomes a site of public humiliation where Ryan’s paranoia manifests in a hallucination that leaves her ostracized. Both locations are sites of failure—one a failure of memory, the other a failure of perception. By contrast, Chase’s small bungalow becomes a sanctuary. In this unassuming private space, Ryan washes away the shame of the lake party, confesses her deepest fears without judgment, and experiences intimacy. Her declaration that she is in “the right place” marks the first time she feels a sense of belonging in Starling.
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