57 pages • 1 hour read
Angie KimHappiness Falls
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “This Is Not a Missing-Person Story”
Part 5, Chapter 27 Summary: “The Veil of the Waterfall”
Mia is reluctant to think the worst—that Eugene could have killed Adam—meditating on the “innate bias for causation-driven narrative” (288), but Shannon insists that they need to decide on a narrative that both explains the video evidence and exonerates Eugene. Later, while Eugene sleeps between them, John and Mia discuss a possible explanation using their “mind-meld” mode of conversation, in which they build logically on each other’s thoughts. In their version of the narrative, Adam’s wallet is stolen, Eugene tries to help and is on the verge of falling down the cliff, and Adam falls to his death trying to save his son.
Part 5, Chapter 28 Summary: “Whispered Screaming Practice”
Mia dreams about Harmonee teaching her and John “whispered screaming” (298) before Eugene was born, and wonders if Eugene’s morning wailing reflects disappointment at the end of dreams in which he can communicate. Having decided not to tell the police about the birdwatcher’s video, the family worries when Shannon announces that Detective Janus wants to speak with them. Via Zoom, Detective Janus reports that Anjeli has agreed to a virtual interview with Eugene.
Part 5, Chapter 29 Summary: “Connecting…Connecting…”
Eugene is delighted to see Anjeli via Zoom. Anjeli confesses that her fiancée Zoe showed the police a note from their last session, in which Eugene was venting about hating his father. Anjeli explains the conflict that resulted in this anger: Adam and Eugene were preparing to tell the family about Eugene’s new communication abilities, when John told Adam about a new study using eye tracking equipment to prove the veracity of letterboard use among children with autism. Without consulting Eugene, Adam decided to postpone their reveal to contact the study’s lead author. Furious about the delay, Eugene vented to Anjeli, “WANTHIMGONEOUTOFLIFEFOREVERJUSTDIE” (310). Anjeli didn’t think the delay was fair and arranged to meet them in the park to mediate.
Part 5, Chapter 30 Summary: “Because of Rock That’s Broken”
Eugene begins to spell: He and Adam made up, but then encountered bullies in the park who verbally abused Eugene. Adam defended him, then got into a verbal altercation with a woman who accused Eugene of disturbing the peace. She then pepper-sprayed Adam, which is when Eugene inadvertently scratched Adam’s face. Afterwards, Eugene and Adam communicated via letterboard; Eugene is proud that Adam shared the HQ notebook’s ideas with him.
Anjeli is impressed, but wants to see video of their communication. Eugene tells her Adam didn’t record it, but did take two pages of notes, which have not been found, but which Adam apparently photographed with his phone. As Eugene continues, Mia grows uneasy: Eugene’s story matches the hypothetical John and Mia discussed the previous night while Eugene slept. Eugene tells the others that he and Adam went to the waterfall, where three boys took Adam’s wallet, then threw his backpack. When Eugene slipped trying to retrieve the backpack, Adam grabbed his arm and pulled him back, but when Eugene opened his eyes, Adam was gone.
Part 5, Chapter 31 Summary: “Relatively Happy for the Rest of My Life”
Hannah, John, and Mia grieve, weeping together in Eugene’s doorway as he jumps. Shannon leaves to try to get the case dropped.
Vic meanwhile has found something for Mia: a file from Adam’s computer titled “Notes for Mia—Fall 2020” (332), which she identifies as drafts for the letters Adam wrote her each year at college drop off. In them, Adam discusses being upset at Mia dropping her philosophy major, wanting her to do what makes her happy. He also considers what it means to be both ambitious and happy, and whether that’s possible for Mia by focusing on keeping her happiness baseline low.
Part 5, Chapter 32 Summary: “The Beginning of the End (?)”
During a Zoom call to discuss nullifying the hearing order, Detective Janus says the police have been unable to corroborate Eugene’s statement, and that they have received the birdwatcher video. While the detective is suspicious that the family had it before the police, the presiding officer doesn’t find Janus’s doubts compelling. They discuss the two missing pages of notes, which John goes upstairs to retrieve from Eugene’s pocket. Finally, the officer cancels the detention order.
Part 5 Analysis
Part 5 returns to the mystery plot, revealing through Eugene’s story what happened to Adam. Because Eugene himself tells the story, narrative ambiguity is never fully removed: Partly because of his still potentially questionable communication abilities and partly because Mia doubts the full veracity of Eugene’s version of events, as well as Hannah’s and John’s actions. Since Eugene’s story is exactly the same as Mia and John’s hypothesis about how Adam met his death, there are two possibilities: Either John and Mia intuited what happened to Adam through an uncanny familial connection, or Eugene overheard them and repeats their conjecture:
Because any way you looked at it, that was weird, right? Eerie if you thought we got the images zapped from Eugene’s brain, obviously, but troubling in a different way if you thought Eugene heard and repeated our whispers, our words having seeped into his dreams [...] what if Eugene repeated our words intentionally? (331).
Until this point, the novel has focused on the inexplicably Unbreakable Family Connections the Parksons share, highlighting Mia and John’s twin bond, Mia and Hannah’s similar reflections on philosophical concepts like “Blue Brain,” the echoes of Harmonee’s experiences in Mia’s trauma. The novel has also foregrounded theories of collective knowledge more generally. As a result, Mia’s doubts do not affect her loyalty to and desire to protect Eugene; their family bond is constant, regardless of what really happened.
The novel’s conclusion does not resolve its plot fully; unlike in a traditional mystery, questions remain for both the characters and the reader. Mia often has the complex experience of doubting important events and people, at times distrusting Eugene, Adam, Hannah, John, and herself. Her doubt about the existence of Adam’s two-page note connects to her earlier decision to wash Eugene’s bloody clothes and nails. She doesn’t want John to go upstairs to look for the note, “Not because I doubted the existence of those two pages—I didn’t at that point; not yet—but because I remembered where the shorts were: in the washing machine where I’d put Eugene’s stained clothes, right before telling him to scrub off the blood under his nails” (343). Mia documents her hesitation to learn the truth, either about the note or about Eugene’s bloody fingernails; she is happier to hold on to ambiguity than to have factual answers, in full defiance of the way investigator figures behave in the detective genre. This subversion of genre is emphasized in Part V’s title: “This is Not a Missing-Person Story.” Mia thinks the genre is popular because “[o]ur brains are hardwired to want resolution, to want the answer” (291), but while she fears that “Dad’s story was a missing-person story and would remain one,” which is ” fun for some in fiction but horrible in real life” (291), she is clearly not driven to achieve certainty—a foreshadowing of her character’s final act.
