53 pages • 1 hour read
This Is Our Story
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Chapters 28-32
Chapter 28 Summary
A week and a half later, Kate is feeling helpless. With her mom watching her like a hawk, she’s unable to meet Shep. She then learns that Shep is going to take a deal. If he pleads guilty, he’ll get manslaughter with a cap of 20 years in prison (a second-degree murder conviction could mean life in prison). He will enter his guilty plea the next day at nine o’clock in the morning. Kate is desperate to do something.
Kate looks at old photos related to the case. Looking at a picture of Grant and Henry on the back patio at River Point, she notices something huge: The chair the boys are sitting on has a small swirl-like design, matching the pattern she saw in the photo of Bree Holder and the other girls. Kate now knows the photo was taken at River Point and, undoubtedly, by one of the River Point Boys.
Shortly after, Kate happens to run into Lori, the dark-haired girl who got into a fight with Grant—and who Henry defended—the night before Grant died. Kate tells Lori she’s working for the DA’s office and asks her some questions. The girl confirms that she was angry at Grant because she suspected that he was the one behind the photos. Kate suggests that perhaps Henry was the one who killed Grant. The girl, angry, replies: “Hardly anyone tried to figure out who did this to us—most just talked about us…If Henry did it, then he was the only one with the guts to actually do something about it” (285).
John Michael’s narration takes over. He’s relieved that the ordeal is almost over but he remains perplexed by the “mystery to be solved” that Grant left behind (286). He still can’t figure out how Grant took the photos of his dad with Gaines (or the photos of Bree Holder and the other girls).
Chapter 29 Summary
Shep and Kate meet that night. It may be their last chance to see one another in freedom. Shep pleads guilty tomorrow. Following Kate’s tip, Shep and his lawyer went to see Lori, pursuing the possibility that Henry may have been the murderer. Lori wouldn’t cooperate; she had called the DA’s office and learned that Kate had been fired, and reported Kate for harassment. She also said that Kate made the story about Henry up. Kate is devastated, knowing that she will never win back Mr. Stone’s trust now.
After her meeting with Shep, Kate goes to River Point. She uses her knowledge of photography to figure out from what angle the photo of the girls would have been taken. It leads her to a wildlife camera, hidden in a birdhouse. She uses her sock as a glove to avoid contaminating the area with fingerprints. She is convinced that the answer to the mystery, maybe both mysteries, is on the camera’s memory card.
She calls Reagan and tells her everything, and she and Reagan meet up at the school’s media arts lab to look at the memory card. As they go through the photos, a series of telltale events, all of which took place on the River Point back patio, is revealed. These pictures are the answer to the book’s mysteries.
First, they see a series of photos showing Grant, leading Bree and Lori and the other girl, out onto the patio and positioning them in provocative poses. The girls are clearly out of it, drunk or drugged.
Then, they see another photo showing John Michael’s father, Mr. Forres, paying off Gaines with a suitcase of cash. Mr. Forres’s construction company has had multiple complaints filed against it for overcharging for renovations downtown. So far, the DA’s office hasn’t taken action though. Now, the girls know why.
Finally, they see a photo from the morning that Grant was shot. They see John Michael, coming out of the River Point house, with the Remington in hand. Kate and Reagan have identified the murderer as well as his motive.
John Michael confirms his motive as the murderer in his brief internal monologue at the chapter’s end. He describes how Grant handed him the photo of Mr. Forres paying off Gaines, saying “It sure would suck if this made it out into the world” (299). This was the night before Grant’s murder.
Chapter 30 Summary
It’s the morning of Shep’s guilty plea. Kate and Reagan are racing to intervene before he can plead guilty. They call Stone but can’t reach him. So they go to the courthouse. Everyone is already in the courtroom. The courtroom has a side media room, hooked up to a projector that can display images in the court. They set up the tech so that the incriminating images play for everyone in the courtroom to see. When the picture of Grant setting up the girls appears, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins start crying. When the picture of Mr. Forres and Gaines appears, Mr. Forres starts shouting and Gaines is stunned. When the picture of John Michael with the Remington appears, John Michael starts crying.
Chapter 31 Summary
Shep’s lawyer tell the court they will not make a plea deal after all. The judge interviews Reagan and Kate privately about how they go the photos. Kate assures the judge that she didn’t contaminate any of the evidence. The judge lets them off with 30 hours of community service. Kate leaves the room and finds Shep. He gives her a kiss, in the open, in front of his mother and hers. He’s going to be okay.
Chapter 32 Summary
It’s about a week later. Shep and Kate are hanging out wit Reagan and her boyfriend, Josh. Shep and Kate are now openly dating. Their lives seem to have rapidly returned to normal and they’re depicted as everyday teenagers. Kate reveals that Shep stayed at Marshall public school while Henry and Logan re-enrolled at St. Bart’s. The boys, undoubtedly feeling guilty for their role in almost getting Shep convicted, have been trying to talk to Shep but he isn’t ready to hear them out yet. John Michael plead guilty.
John Michael’s narration concludes the book. He recounts how Grant held the photo of his father and Gaines over his head, and how Grant had been causing trouble in general. He purposefully took the Remington, knowing all the boys’ fingerprints would be on it, to shoot Grant: “It felt better than I thought it would,” he says (311). He concludes that he thought their joined silence would hold them together but instead it ripped them apart: “The truth found a way” (311), he notes.
Chapters 28-32 Analysis
The book’s final chapters offer a dramatic climax and conclusion that fulfill multiple conceits of the thriller drama. First, there is the “deadline.” Since the start of the book, various deadlines have propelled the mystery forward. First, there was the date of the grand jury hearing. In the final chapters, the deadline is drastically shortened to barely 24 hours when Kate learns that Shep plans to plead guilty the next morning. The last chapters also make use of a red herring, with the suggestion that Henry might be the killer. This points both Kate and the reader away from the real murderer, John Michael, making the revelation all the more shocking.
The book also adds the element of courtroom drama, having Kate and Reagan unveil the murderer’s identity in front of a room full of people. This allows for the reactions of all the persons involved to be seen in a single, drama-filled scene. Grant’s parents sob in shame at the revelation that their son took the lewd pictures of the St. Bart’s girls, for example, while Gaines sinks to his chair in silent shock when pictures arise of him taking bribes.
Many of the book’s central symbols, motifs, and themes are reiterated through its conclusion. The Remington gun, a symbol of both Grant’s murderer and of the “boys’ club” bond, started out as a symbol of the River Point Boys’ bond. All of their fingerprints were on it, preventing any one person from being pinpointed as the murderer. It’s ironic, then, that the gun becomes the identifier of the murderer, singling out John Michael. This mirrors the splintering of the River Point Boys private club, already evidenced when the boys agreed to turn on Shep.
The motif of photography also comes to a head. It’s Kate’s discovery of the wildlife camera, and the damning images it’s captured, that allows her to solve both the primary mystery (the murder as well as the motive) and the secondary mystery (the lewd picture of the St. Bart’s girls).
The book’s arguments that the justice system is unfair—and skewed to favor the privileged—are also evident in the last chapters. Shep almost goes to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. While John Michael concludes, “The truth found a way” (311), it was only due to Kate’s tireless investigation that justice was served. The legal system came very near to putting an innocent man behind bars while letting a killer go free. Although Kate has managed to circumvent injustice in this instance, the argument that she’s made repeatedly—namely, that the legal system is flawed and that it tends to prioritize the privileged—seems to be true. This is reiterated when John Michael says, “Since I had those pictures of the DA with the money, I knew he would make sure we didn’t get in trouble” (311).
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