48 pages • 1 hour read
Seraphina Nova GlassOn a Quiet Street
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.
Chapter 26-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 26 Summary: “Paige”
That evening, Paige meets with Cora and Nicola. Paige is going to wear a ski mask and break into the Kinney house to retrieve the audio recording device she placed in his briefcase. Nicola explains that the briefcase is usually in Lucas’s office upstairs and gives Paige the code to the security system. Just before midnight, Paige sneaks in. She gets the audio recorder, but Lucas sees her when he comes out of the bathroom. He attacks her, but she escapes and goes home. While in the bath, she wonders if Caleb felt the same terror that she just felt in the moments before he died.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Cora”
The next morning, the police call Finn and ask him to come to the police station for an interview. A few hours later, Cora gets a text from Paige telling her to get Nicola and Avery out of the house immediately. They pack quickly and drive off. Paige calls and tells Cora that Finn has been arrested and the police are on their way to search Cora’s house with a warrant. Cora takes Nicola and Avery to Paige’s house to hide out. While there, Paige gives them the audio recording device that she retrieved from Lucas’s bag. An hour later, Cora sees the police arrive at her house. She lets them in and supervises their search. When she returns to Paige’s house, Paige tells Cora that Nicola reviewed the audio files and found evidence of abuse. They plan to go to the police with the evidence the next day.
Cora returns to her house. Her daughter, Mia, leaves to go to a friend’s house. Cora goes into Mia’s room and sees that her laptop is still on. Cora snoops and sees a file labeled “Caleb” on the laptop. In the file is a video of Mia at the scene of Caleb’s death. Mia is crying and insisting that they get help for Caleb. Then, she is pulled away by an unseen man. In the background of the video, the BMW owned by the Kinneys pulls away.
Chapter 28 Summary: “Nicola”
Despite the late hour, Cora goes over to Paige’s house to show Nicola the video. Cora asks Nicola if the BMW is her car. Nicola admits that she hit Lucas with the car, but she never meant to kill him. Cora is shocked. Nicola explains that before she was permanently locked in the house and still had some freedom, she and Caleb had a relationship. Caleb was addicted to drugs, and he blackmailed Nicola into giving him money to buy them. She was afraid that Caleb would tell Lucas that Avery was Caleb’s child. The night of the accident, Caleb was high on cocaine. He pulled a gun on Nicola—the gun found at the scene of the crime. He fired, missed, and then aimed again. That is when Nicola hit him with the car. Cora is stunned and leaves.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Paige”
Paige overhears Nicola’s confession on the baby monitor. She is angry and stunned to learn her son had been addicted to drugs and that Nicola killed him. She drops the glass of water she is holding. Nicola hears the breaking glass and comes out to check on Paige. Paige says, “It was you” (266).
Chapter 30 Summary: “Cora”
Cora goes to bed. In the morning, she texts Mia and asks her to come home immediately. Cora shows Mia the video she found on Mia’s laptop. Mia explains that the night of the accident, she had been driving past Paige’s house with her now ex-boyfriend Ryan when they saw Caleb on the ground in the driveway. They stopped, but Ryan insisted that they not contact the police because Ryan had MDMA pills on him and was afraid that the police would find out. Mia admits that she vaguely remembers seeing the BMW drive past that night. Cora feels upset that Finn is in jail and they can’t tell the police who really killed Caleb.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Paige”
Cora, Nicola, and Paige meet at Paige’s house. Cora shows Paige the video and Nicola tearfully apologizes to Paige. Paige decides that they are going to frame Lucas for the crime. They are going to tell the police that Lucas killed Caleb because he found out about Caleb’s affair and the true parentage of Avery. They will use the video to show that his car was at the scene and the audio recordings to prove he was holding Nicola captive. To make it work, they need Finn to tell the police that he was with Lucas that night and that Lucas drove him home at 10 o’clock and dropped him off, then went back out to confront Caleb. Finn can say he lied about that night to the police before in order to cover for his friend Lucas.
Chapter 32 Summary: “Cora”
Cora goes to see Finn in prison. She tells him about the video she found on Mia’s computer. She makes sure that Finn understands what he needs to say. Finn is confused but agrees to repeat the story. Cora leaves, feeling empowered for the first time in a long time. On Cora’s way home, she stops at Grant’s restaurant and watches him working at the counter from her car in the parking lot. She feels desire for him but resists it, knowing what a betrayal of her friendship with Paige it would be.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Paige”
That night, Nicola looks out Paige’s living room window and sees Lucas being arrested and taken away by the police. Paige tells Nicola to get down; if Lucas knows where Nicola is, Nicola will be in danger if he gets out on bail.
After Nicola goes to bed, Paige calls Grant and asks him to come over. She tells him that Avery is Caleb’s son and that Lucas killed Caleb when he found out. Grant is stunned but happy to have a granddaughter. Paige warns him that Lucas could get out of jail soon and that he is dangerous. They curl up together next to the baby and Paige asks Grant if he would like to move back in. He nods yes.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Cora”
The next morning, Cora leaves the house to pick Finn up from jail. As she walks out to her car, she sees Grant with a suitcase. He tells her that he is moving back in with Paige. Although Cora is briefly sad, she takes comfort from Grant’s strength of character.
Cora gets to the jail and picks up Finn. She tells him that she has arranged for him to stay at his friend’s house. While they drive, Cora presents Finn with the divorce papers. Finn loses his temper. He berates her “crazy little witches’ circle” for getting people arrested (295). He tells her their plans didn’t work because Lucas has already been released on bail. Cora panics, pushes Finn out of the car, and drives off, calling the police.
Chapter 35 Summary: “Nicola”
Nicola is sitting out in Paige’s backyard when Lucas hits her on the head and drags her into the kitchen. He saw her in the window the night he was arrested. Nicola fights him off and grabs a kitchen knife. He fights it off her and holds it to her neck. Nicola pretends to surrender, but at the first opportunity, she grabs the knife back and stabs him in the shoulder. She runs to get Avery, but he grabs her by the hair and pulls her back. He forces her outside and toward their house when he hears sirens and freezes. Nicola gets away from him while holding Avery. She sees Paige come outside with a loaded shotgun pointed at Lucas. Lucas backs away with his hands up. Paige shoots and kills him. Before the police arrive, Nicola takes the gun from Paige so that it looks like Nicola shot him in self-defense.
Epilogue Summary: “One Year Later: Nicola”
A year later, Nicola is living in Cornwall, England, with Avery. Cora has since moved to Fort Lauderdale to be near Mia, who is attending Florida State University. Paige and Grant are planning to move to the East Coast. There were no trials. The evidence showed that Lucas murdered Caleb and that Nicola killed Lucas in self-defense.
That morning, the postman hands Nicola an envelope. It is the settlement from Lucas’s estate, including his life insurance payout. Nicola looks at the large sum and feels “free” (304).
Chapter 26-Epilogue Analysis
In the final section of On a Quiet Street, there are two plot twists and a reveal of the central mystery regarding who killed Caleb. A plot twist is the exposition of a new piece of information that dramatically changes the understanding and direction of the plot. The first plot twist in these chapters of On a Quiet Street is the reveal that it was Mia and her boyfriend who were the voices Caleb heard before he died, as portrayed in the Prologue. This is presented in such a way to imply that Mia herself had been in the car that hit Caleb. However, this suspense is quickly resolved by the second plot twist.
The second plot twist is Nicola’s confessions in the denouement in Chapter 28. She reveals that Caleb was addicted to drugs and that she had a child with him. She admits to killing him with her car, although the death was unintentional. This radically changes the text’s characterization of Nicola. She had previously been portrayed as a woman whose central conflict is the abusive relationship that she is seeking to escape. This new information shows that she is keeping her own terrible secrets, even from the women who were helping her escape. This makes Nicola’s character more complex. She is not only seeking freedom but is also someone who has made some poor choices with terrible consequences. This is not presented to justify Lucas’s abusive treatment of her but rather to indicate that women in abusive situations are themselves complex human beings. This contrasts with stereotypical presentations of survivors of domestic violence as flat or idealized characters, hence suggesting that there is no typical profile of someone being abused.
Paige is likewise developed and complicated in this section of the book. She transforms from a tough, independent, and seemingly fearless figure into someone who, while maintaining all these features, shows her willingness to be vulnerable and depend on others. For instance, throughout Chapter 26, Paige acts with bravery when fighting with Lucas in the most action-packed and suspenseful episode in the narrative. However, that evening, she goes home and cries in the bathtub, “imagin[ing] Caleb’s last moments with fresh eyes” (245). Following her experiences, she finally reaches out to her husband, Grant, and they have physical intimacy: “They sit with their bare feet intertwined and her weight on his chest” (288). This progression demonstrates that, now she knows the truth of what happened to Caleb, she is capable once again of opening up and letting someone in. She even extends this sense of care and intimacy to Nicola by letting Nicola stay in her home despite her knowledge that Nicola killed her son. This shows that, by the end of the novel, Paige has developed a complex combination of strength and vulnerability.
The Epilogue of On a Quiet Street is a typical resolution of the mystery genre. All of the conflicts are all resolved to the satisfaction of the three protagonists: Paige, Cora, and Nicola. Paige has reconnected with her husband, Grant. Cora got a divorce from Finn and moved to the opposite side of the country to be near Mia. Nicola has returned to her home country, England, and has received a large sum of money. None of them faced criminal charges. These conclusions, in addition to the death of Lucas in the previous chapter, are a form of “poetic justice,” since righteousness is rewarded and immorality is punished The antagonists of the text get tragic endings because they acted immorally. The text directly addresses this trope: Nicola describes the settlement check she receives as “a sort of poetic justice” (304). A narrative directly addressing a trope is a literary technique known as lampshading. In this context, Glass uses lampshading to explain the good fortune experienced by the protagonists, particularly Nicola. However, the fact that Nicola dilutes the justice by saying “sort of” highlights the fact that money cannot make up for the trauma of abuse.
