44 pages • 1 hour read
Katy HaysThe Cloisters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 23-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary
A team of detectives arrives to investigate the thefts; they pack up Leo’s things and his garden shed. Ann and Rachel continue working on their article. Leo arrives and confronts the detectives, and Detective Murphy tells him they’ve discovered a belladonna root that had been harvested and arrests him. Meanwhile, Ann and Rachel are having a picnic. Ann is concerned by how detached Rachel is from the situation. Rachel gifts Ann with her own set of tarot cards. Ann does a reading with them, and they reveal misfortune and severing.
Chapter 24 Summary
Ann and Rachel discuss Leo, who’s currently in prison. Ann thinks Rachel’s privilege is a barrier to understanding her and Leo. Rachel leaves, and Ann calls Detective Murphy to tell her Leo isn’t a killer. Detective Murphy isn’t certain, and asks about Leo’s antiques dealer—Stephen Ketch. Ann realizes that no one is being honest with her, and that Rachel is the one manipulating them all. Detective Murphy tells her Leo will soon be released. Ann searches Rachel’s apartment as well as the suite above, which belonged to Rachel’s parents, until she finds a small item stolen from the museum.
Chapter 25 Summary
Ann is hired permanently and given the title of assistant curator. She begins avoiding Rachel and plans to find her own apartment. In preparation for Patrick’s replacement, Ann goes through his office and takes one of his books for herself. Moira comes in and mentions that Leo’s been released; she reveals that he had once been involved with Rachel. Ann prompts Moira for more information, and Moira describes the love triangle between Leo, Rachel, and Patrick. Later, Ann meets Leo and confronts him about Rachel. He tells her that Rachel helped him with the thefts, and had tried to buy Patrick’s tarot cards. Leo thinks Rachel killed Patrick.
Chapter 26 Summary
Rachel prepares to return to New York for graduate school and invites Ann for a final holiday at Long Lake. When they arrive, Ann discovers that Margaret is away on holiday and that the house is empty. They go into town to eat and talk about the future; Patrick’s replacement has been hired, and Rachel reveals she put in a word for Ann’s new role. Ann considers what she’s recently learned about Rachel’s parents’ deaths as she read through the news features on them, thinking that it must have been fate. Back at the house, Ann opens the book she took from Patrick and finds the missing tarot card inside; the false front has already been removed.
Chapter 27 Summary
The next day, both women try to relax until a storm comes and they’re forced indoors. Ann does a private tarot reading with the deck now complete; she sees distrust and broken families. Rachel arrives and questions Ann about her need to know the future. Ann prepares a reading for her and sees death. Outside, a bolt of lightning strikes their boathouse and Rachel runs outside. Ann follows and confronts her about Patrick.
Rachel admits that Patrick discovered the secret cards during their enhanced reading; she didn’t want him to take their opportunity away so she poisoned him. She insists that he took the poison by choice, just like Ann came to the Cloisters by choice.
Ann remembers the day that her father died, and for the first time in the novel, reflects on the full events of that day. Her father was waiting by his broken-down car beside the road, and Ann, driving home from school, had accidentally hit him. When she stopped to see to him, her father insisted she keep driving. Ann acknowledges now that the accident was predestined and she was not responsible. Rachel hugs Ann and tells her that they’re alike. However, Ann knows that Rachel is coming to her doom.
Chapter 28 Summary
The next morning, Ann hitches a ride away from Long Lake. She rides with a sympathetic woman who deduces Ann is running from a damaging relationship. She goes to stay with Laure until Monday; when she arrives, she’s informed that Rachel has died in a sailing accident. Ann meets with Leo, and he tells her that he was the first contact. He invites Ann out, but Ann is uncertain about their future. Back at Laure’s, Ann deletes Rachel’s name from their article and throws away the ring Rachel gave her.
Chapter 29 Summary
Months later, the article is released and Ann begins to ascend the world of academia. She privately sells Patrick’s tarot cards for a substantial sum. She wonders if Patrick arranged for her to miss her original role and come to the Cloisters, but she learns she was actually there on Rachel’s recommendation. Ann considers the similarities between Rachel’s death and that of her parents’; a missing piece allowed water into both sailboats. Ann suspects that Rachel planned her parents’ deaths and stole the piece. Ann reveals that she employed the same method to sabotage Rachel’s boat. Nevertheless, she believes that Rachel’s death was unavoidable and predestined.
Chapters 23-29 Analysis
Until this stage of the novel, Ann had been growing closer to Rachel and believing they shared a path. Here, however, she begins to move beyond that relationship and become her own fully formed person. She starts to see Rachel for who she is, acknowledging Rachel’s privilege as a barrier between her and other people.
This section of the novel delves into Fate Versus Free Will. Ann becomes increasingly reliant on what she sees in the tarot cards. The novel intentionally does not specify whether or not the cards are accurate or supernaturally potent; rather, it only depicts the relationship Ann shares with them. In this way what she perceives through her divinatory practice can be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy. She projects her own unease about her decaying relationships onto the images in front of her and uses them to validate her feelings. In particular, she reads the devil card as an indication of Rachel’s impending death. However, in tarot practice this card can also mean an extreme transformation or a new dawn—such as the one Ann and Rachel would have faced together when their article was published.
By choosing to see the card as a premonition of death, Ann allows herself to believe she is only following a predetermined and inescapable path when she arranges for Rachel’s death. She exonerates herself of Choice and Personal Responsibility.
Leo’s story also reaches a point of completion. He’s released from prison and finds a way to look at his sentence in a positive light, seeing it as more time to devote to his writing. By the end of the novel, his power dynamic with Ann has reversed. Earlier he was in control of their relationship, and now Ann is the one holding back and leaving him questioning. There is a sense that even if the two reconnect in the future, their relationship will be forever altered.
Ann also forges a new relationship with her inner self, releasing the guilt she felt from unintentionally killing her father. The events of the novel have taught her that tragedy serves a larger purpose in the universe, that she is only one small part of it. This creates the book’s major dramatic question: Are one’s actions predestined, or are they the result of free will?
In this final section, Hays delves into The Conflict Between Ambition and Loyalty. Ann has obtained everything she worked for and more: She’s attained a permanent position at the Cloisters, doing the work she loves; she has gained the respect of the academic world and is seen through new eyes; she has sold the tarot cards for a substantial amount of money and is able to live comfortably for the foreseeable future. However, there is the sense that she has had to undergo a personal death in order to become this version of herself. This interpretation suggests that the death card did not refer to Rachel at all, but to Ann—and that Rachel’s death was the thing that ultimately killed her.
