In The Woods Chapter 25 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Rosalind has to be re-interviewed with the parents present, and they generally interfere, saying there's no way Rosalind did what they said she did.
  • Cassie, Rob, and Sam clean up the incident room. The case is over.
  • Cassie testifies at Damien's trial, but Rob doesn't.
  • Rosalind is called as a witness, though she doesn't have a trial of her own. Her attorney bargains a deal for a three-year suspended sentence for resisting arrest.
  • Outside the courthouse, Devlin tells Rob that Jessica tried to kill herself.
  • He also admits that he suspected Rosalind the whole time, but "She's my daughter, too" (25.39). What was he supposed to do?
  • Rob apologizes for pursuing Jonathan.
  • Jonathan says they're going to move—ever since being accused of child abuse, his house has been vandalized.
  • He worries that Rosalind will never change, and he says that he wishes he had made his wife have an abortion when she had her. Whoa.
  • The rest is very epilogue-y:
  • Damian is found guilty, and sentenced to life.
  • Rob is suspended, but remains on the force; he gets demoted to the floater pool.
  • Cassie transfers to Domestic Violence.
  • Sam never exposes his uncle, although he does end up renting out his ill-gotten house.
  • Rob goes out with Sophie a couple of times, but she accuses him of being "f***ed up" (25.71). We think she has a point—and she's certainly not the first person to make such an observation.
  • Rob tries to focus on the positive, and even thinks of a happy memory of Peter, Jamie, and him eating junk food and enjoying the summer.
  • One day, Simone Cameron, the dance teacher, calls. She found Katy's diary, which everyone had presumed had been thrown away. Instead, she'd hidden it at the dance studio.
  • In it, she writes that Rosalind was making her sick, and she hates Rosalind.
  • But Rosalind said she was sorry, and even got her a lucky charm to apologize.
  • That, of course, is the last entry.
  • Simone wonders if they could have saved Katy if she'd found it sooner, but Rob doubts it.
  • A few weeks later, Rob learns that Cassie and Sam are engaged, so he calls her and says "I'm so, so sorry. I love you" (25.110).
  • She puts the phone down, but either doesn't hang up on purpose, or misses the phone cradle on accident.
  • Rob listens to Cassie tell Rob that it was a wrong number—"Some drunk guy" (25.112), she says.
  • Cassie falls asleep, and Rob listens to her sleeping.
  • Rob has no idea if she did it on purpose, and if so, if she did it to hurt him, or to give him "one last gift, one last night listening to her breathe" (25.117). Either way, it's a little creepy.
  • Finally, Rob goes into the woods one last time before the motorway is built.
  • Rob asks one of the workmen, kind of as a joke, if he's found any dead bodies during his work.
  • He hasn't, of course, but he gives Rob an arrowhead that he found and says he can hang onto it.
  • Rob gives it back to the man, saying his grandson should have it.
  • He looks at his hand, where he squeezed the arrow head, and looks at the "slender red marks" (25.148) across his palm, and he returns to his car.
  • The end.