These Silent Woods

That night, Cooper tells Marie his entire story, struggling to figure out where to start and how much to reveal. He goes over his relationship with Cindy in detail, admitting that she may have fallen for him out of boredom, but insisting they had a special bond. He talks about their excitement at her pregnancy and the tragedy of the car accident. When he gets to the part about taking Finch back from her grandparents, Cooper glosses over some of the details, leaving Marie skeptical about his actions. Then, he goes on to tell her how Jake helped them in the early weeks. She encourages him to talk about his memories of Jake in Afghanistan and reflects on his final days. Marie tells Cooper that she understands his actions, and why he took Finch, but insists that he needs to tell the authorities that he saw the girl in the woods. Still, Cooper hesitates, worried that he would be charged with kidnapping and assault—the acts that he left out of the story he told Marie. She asks him to think about Finch, and how he would feel if she went missing.

Ultimately, Cooper tells Marie that he will go to the payphone and call the sheriff the following morning. She is grateful and tells Cooper that he is a “good man,” despite everything that has happened to him. However, Cooper thinks to himself that this is not true.

The following day, Marie leaves. Scotland comes to visit and brings newspapers. He tells Finch and Cooper that the girl went missing, but that her boyfriend is saying that she had dreams of going to California.

For the rest of the day, Finch reads and annotates the newspapers, gaining as much information as she can about the girl. That night, she tells Cooper that they need to contact the police. She reveals that she had gone back to the spot on her own to see the girl multiple times, and on the last time, she saw her fighting with her boyfriend. Finch hit her boyfriend with a rock from her slingshot, then ran. Cooper becomes angry at Finch for lying and for disobeying him by going back to find the girl. He argues with Finch and tells her that—despite his promise to Marie—they are not contacting the police and they are staying out of it. Finch quotes a Walt Whitman poem, telling him that honesty is important and that they must do what’s right.

Cooper considers how he brought Finch out here and broke the law but justifies it because he knows that he is raising her right. He tries to reconcile that with the fact that he is mad at Finch for protecting a girl—and mad that she wants to report it. As Finch goes to bed, she tells Cooper that he “should be ashamed of [himself]” (229), and Cooper thinks how much it hurts to hear that from Finch. He also realizes that he is, in fact, “ashamed.”

The next morning, Cooper wakes up early and realizes that Finch is gone. He runs from the house and goes to the spot where Finch said she last saw Casey. He finds what looks like a campsite, where Casey has set up a tent, a firepit, and even a camping chair. As he scans the area, he finds Casey’s dead body half buried in the snow with a bruise on her face.

He leaves the area and continues to frantically look for Finch. After hours of searching, he finally finds her, huddled in a cave. He grabs Finch and hugs her as she sobs and says that she was “too late.”

Cooper takes Finch back to the cabin and slowly nurses her back to health, as she is hypothermic and dehydrated. After a day, her health returns, but she refuses to speak to Cooper. Scotland comes to their cabin and shows them the newspaper. Their photo is on the front cover with the headline “Who Are They?” (240), as Casey had gotten a photo of them in their blind that day in the woods.

Cooper panics. He thinks of how the boy murdered his girlfriend and will come back to find Finch—the witness. He considers how it is only a matter of time before they are identified from the photo. Through it all, Scotland comforts him and offers whatever help he has, which makes Cooper feel guilty for having distrusted Scotland and kept him at a distance.

Cooper takes Finch into town to a payphone and calls Marie. He tells her to come to the cabin the following day. When he returns to the cabin, he tells her that he needs to go to the police station and tell them everything. He informs her that he hurt someone—hurt her grandparents—in order to have her with him. Although she insists that he will be okay, he repeatedly tells her that he does not believe so, and that he will end up separated from her and likely in jail. He tells her that he needs her to be prepared for that to happen.

Cooper decides that he would rather act now and tell the police everything so that at least he has “some control over the situation. Some dignity” and that at least he “can say goodbye” to Finch (246). That night, after Finch has gone to bed, Cooper searches through the books in the cabin for a poem to write to Finch and leave for her to remember him. He finally settles on “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.

Cooper prepares to leave Finch, reflecting on how she will grow and change to the point where he may not even recognize her. He leaves the finished quilt for her. Cooper goes out of the cabin and fires the flare for Scotland. When Scotland comes, Cooper asks him to take care of the chickens and tells him his plan to go to the police. Scotland offers to hide Cooper, but Cooper declines and realizes that he regrets being rude to Scotland all these years. He realizes that “maybe all along what [Scotland] wanted was to help [them], in his own strange way” (250-51).

The next morning, Marie arrives. Cooper gives the address for the Judges’ house and asks her to do what she can to make sure they know that Finch was taken care of all these years. As Cooper prepares to leave, Finch refuses to look at him. However, when he gets into his car and pulls away, she chases after him. She cries and screams and tells Cooper that she is sorry, that she is not ashamed of him, and that she does not want him to go. Marie is forced to pry Finch off Cooper as she continues to struggle and cry. Cooper leaves and thinks about how this could be the last time he sees his daughter.

When Cooper gets to the police station, there is a crowd out front. He asks a man what is going on, and he tells Cooper that the body of the girl was found. A man came into the police station and said he knew where the body was, but that he did not kill her, and he took the police to it. The man who came to the police station also informed them that the man and girl in the photo—Cooper and Finch—were squatters on his land and that he killed them. He had flesh-eating bugs that he used on them, then dumped their bones into the river. He provided the police with Cooper’s dog tags and Finch’s tooth as evidence.

The bystander tells Cooper that the man’s name was Marcus Barnes, but that everyone calls him Scotland.

Cooper rushes home, hoping to stop Finch and Marie before they leave. He is relieved to find them there when he gets back and tells Finch that there has been a new development. He rushes to the spot where he’d kept the tooth that Finch had recently lost. In its place, Cooper finds a note from Scotland. He tells Cooper that this was his decision and he hopes that Cooper can accept it, because he knows that “deep down” Cooper is a “good man” and will likely have to fight the urge to go to the police station and stop him. He tells Cooper that going to the police—for his friend—is a “great honor and [his] final wish” (264). Cooper leaves the cabin and goes to the site where Casey’s body is. There are several police cars and an ambulance with a body bag being loaded into it. He thinks of the site of her death and how there is likely enough evidence there to connect the murder to her boyfriend.

The epilogue is narrated by Finch, now 19 years old, who drives back to the cabin to see her father and Marie. Finch reflects on the events that have taken place since the incidents described earlier: Marie asked to live with them the year Finch was 11, and she was instrumental in helping to ease Finch’s transition into the wider world. Although it is awkward at first and they make an agreement to not talk about her father, Finch realizes how much she had been “growing more and more restless for answers [and] connection with the outside world” (269). She met her grandparents and enrolled in high school at 16. College, however, has provided more congenial.

She often thinks of what her father did for her and wonders whether she would do the same thing. She also wonders what it would be like to have grown up with her grandparents but realizes she would never have wanted that. She returns to the cabin and sees her father sitting on the porch. She rushes toward him, and a group of starlings takes flight.