62 pages • 2 hours read
Nita ProseThe Maid
Fiction | Novel | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4, Chapters 23-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Thursday”
Part 4, Chapter 23 Summary
Molly waits outside the hotel until Rodney arrives. Molly texts him, saying she is at the front door but no one will let her in. Rodney texts back that he’ll be right there.
Molly approaches the hotel. Mr. Preston sees her coming and, as agreed, picks up his hotel phone and tells Mr. Snow that Molly is at the front door and that she won’t leave. Molly’s job is to attract as much attention as she can. She loudly announces that she has every right to be there. Mr. Snow emerges from the hotel. Mr. Preston tells Mr. Snow he is going to fetch security and enters the hotel while Molly keeps Mr. Snow distracted. Mr. Snow tells her she has been fired, and she argues at length, demanding explanations, begging, and holding forth about her value to the hotel.
Finally, Mr. Preston returns. He tells Mr. Snow he couldn’t find Security and takes Molly aside. He slips her a master key card. Rodney bursts through the doors and bounds toward Molly. He promises Mr. Snow he can get her to leave. While Rodney assures Molly he will talk to Mr. Snow and get her job back for her, she passes him the key. Rodney rushes back into the building and Molly can finally retreat to a coffee shop across the street where she can watch the drama unfold.
Part 4, Chapter 24 Summary
While she awaits developments, Molly makes a phone call that wasn’t a part of their plan. Giselle picks up. She asks if Molly is all right. Molly confronts her about the fact that she has been seeing Rodney and never mentioned it to Molly. Giselle begins to cry.
Molly asks Giselle whether she knew Rodney meant to frame her and that he had been using her to carry drugs and clean the rooms after he was done with them. Giselle swears she didn’t and that she was furious when she found out. She knew about her husband’s drug running, and she and Rodney had planned to run away together to the Cayman Islands. She says she seems to be an expert at trusting the wrong people, but she’s not like them.
Molly doesn’t know if she can trust Giselle but she decides to give her friend a chance. She tells Giselle to get out of the hotel by the back door. Molly hangs up and continues to watch the hotel entrance.
The police arrive, having been tipped off by Charlotte that they will find the murderer in the Blacks’ suite. A cluster of officers run into the building. Eventually, they reappear escorting Rodney in handcuffs. Behind them comes Detective Stark carrying the duffel bag full of white powder.
Part 4, Chapter 25 Summary
Molly returns to her apartment where Juan Manuel meets her with dinner ready. Charlotte calls to say that they caught Rodney red-handed and the charges against Molly have been dropped. Charlotte and Mr. Preston arrive with Detective Stark. The detective apologizes to Molly for suspecting her. She adds says that although they have charged Rodney for the drugs, they haven’t yet been able to link him directly to Mr. Black’s murder.
Before Detective Stark leaves, Molly makes sure the detective understands what she did wrong—she expected Molly to behave a certain way, and when Molly didn’t, the detective assumed she was guilty rather than seeing that she was just different.
When the detective is gone, Molly looks around at her friends. She realizes that her grandmother never said how she and Mr. Preston knew each other. Mr. Preston says that he and Molly’s grandmother, Flora, had been engaged many years ago when she was only sixteen. Her parents wouldn’t allow them to marry, and they were forced to part.
Gran described Molly’s grandfather as a fly-by-night. Mr. Preston says that Molly’s grandfather would never have flown away if he hadn’t been forced. He had been a sort of friend to Mr. Preston. Charlotte looks suspiciously at her father, asking who the “friend” was and where he is now. Mr. Preston answers that the last he heard his friend had his own family and loved them very much.
Mr. Preston tells Molly that her grandmother had always been a good friend to him and his wife Mary. Mary was dying and in extreme pain, but she held on for his sake. Flora told him that he had to give Mary permission to go.
After Charlotte and Mr. Preston leave, Juan Manuel helps Molly put fresh sheets on the bed in her room. Then she can no longer postpone the inevitable. She enters her grandmother’s room for the first time since her death. Her grandmother grew weaker as the pain grew worse. Molly begged her to go to the hospital, but she refused. They watched Colombo together for the last time, then Gran said, “It’s time.” Molly cried and protested that there weren’t enough pills in the bottle to do the job, but Gran insisted. Molly put the pills in a cup of tea and begged her grandmother not to drink it, but she did.
Gran’s breathing became shallower. Finally, reciting the Serenity Prayer to herself, Molly took the serenity pillow and held it over Gran’s face until she stopped breathing.
Part 4, Chapters 23-25 Analysis
By taking the lead in the sting on Rodney, Molly symbolically steps out of the child role and into adulthood. She has the help and support of her friends, but in the final confrontation, she must face Rodney, the predator, alone. Once her part is done, Molly proceeds to sit in judgment of the other people who wronged her—Detective Stark and Giselle.
There is little doubt that Mr. Preston is Molly’s grandfather. His explanation of his friendship with Flora and how she came to be pregnant is too full of holes and evasions for any other conclusion. The only unanswered question is why he and Flora didn’t marry after her family kicked her out.
Mr. Preston’s account of how Molly’s grandmother persuaded him to let his wife go foreshadows the revelation of how Molly’s grandmother died. It shows Flora’s understanding of death and the importance of family in the process of dying. Mr. Preston’s wife needed his permission to let go, and Flora needed Molly’s help. In the epilogue, the first Mrs. Black will take the responsibility of seeing to Mr. Black’s death. The parallel between Gran and Mr. Black ties the deaths together philosophically. As Molly had the obligation to help her grandmother, the novel implies that Mrs. Black is the only one with the right and responsibility to pass judgment and sentence on Mr. Black. It suggests that as the mother and ex-wife, she had the obligation to remove his pernicious influence.
In Molly’s conversation with Giselle, Giselle claims to have been unaware that Rodney was exploiting Molly. She admits she should never have asked Molly to retrieve her gun from the suite. Giselle’s gift to Molly in the epilogue seems to bear out Giselle’s lack of bad intent. She is weak rather than malicious. In any event, she has been a friend to Molly in the past, helping her to navigate social relationships and loving her without judgment. Molly, who will show herself to be a merciless judge at Rodney’s trial, deems Giselle worthy of a second chance.
Molly makes sure that Detective Stark understands her error in assuming Molly is guilty just because she is different. Again, Molly is acting as a judge. The detective has made a mistake that could have resulted in a wrongful conviction. As a victim of that mistake, Molly corrects the wrongdoer. Detective Stark seems to recognize that right and accepts her chastisement without protest.
Gran’s death scene fulfills the foreshadowing in Part 1 where Molly referenced the poem by Dylan Thomas, saying that Gran didn’t go quietly; her death required Molly to technically commit murder. At the same time, where the speaker in the poem begs his father to resist death, Gran chooses the time and place of her death and sedates herself to make her passing as easy as possible for Molly.
