Ask Again, Yes

Anne is arrested and charged but found mentally incompetent and hospitalized at a state facility in Albany. Unwilling to deal with neighbors, Brian sells the house, and he and Peter move to Queens to live with Brian’s brother, George. When departmental investigations raise questions about the circumstances of the shooting and Brian’s role in it, Brian summarily resigns from the force.

Within weeks of moving to Queens, Brian tells a stunned Peter he is leaving for South Carolina. Peter decides to stay with George. He does not want to abandon his mother; he dutifully boards a bus and visits the hospital twice a month. Now in a new high school, Peter runs cross country, quite well, but he still cannot forget Kate.

Back in Gillam, Francis struggles through rehabilitation. He suffered no brain damage but lost an eye. His disfigured face, jaw shattered by the bullet, is grotesque to him, “like a clay model of a head that was handled too roughly before it had set” (117). He relies on a regimen of painkillers. Lena and his daughters nurse him around the clock. No one talks about the shooting.

Kate holds on to the hope that Peter will contact her. Lena sees her anxiety and her growing depression and reveals what Anne had said at her trial: She shot Francis in the hopes that if he died, the entire Gleeson