59 pages • 1 hour read
Chris WhitakerAll the Colors of the Dark
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 7: “Fate: 1990” - Part 8: “The Break: 1995”
Part 7, Chapters 133-140 Summary
When Patch is released from prison, Saint picks him up and takes him back to Monta Clare. Though she wrote him often, he never wrote back or let her come to see him in prison. In the car, he thanks her for the letters she wrote the judge, which helped him get a lesser sentence and stay in Missouri close to home.
He moves back into his old house and tries to settle into his life, seeing Sammy and Saint often. One day, he sees a little girl stealing a candy bar. She curses at him, but he helps her perfect her technique. Outside the store, he sees Misty, shocked.
Saint gets forensic techs to search the Tooms’s house, using the newfound technique of DNA in hopes of finding Grace. After they leave, she and Patch walk through the house. He stands in the cellar and tells Saint he is sure that he was never here and neither was Grace.
Part 7, Chapters 141-149 Summary
Misty and Patch have dinner and catch up. She tells him her father died and she left college and moved home. She also tells him that she knows what her father did, forcing Patch to break up with Misty. The two of them reconcile. Patch tells her about his life in prison and that he has been unable to paint. He wishes that he could see the state park where Tooms said he buried Grace. Misty offers to drive him. They walk the path Tooms supposedly took, and Patch says that he doesn’t think Tooms could have carried Grace out that far. He thinks Tooms lied and she is still alive.
Misty and Patch strike up a friendship, spending time together as he works at the gallery. Saint continues her work and goes to Breckenridge to find another of Aaron’s victims. It is a girl named Summer Reynolds who Patch painted, and he drives there to gift the family the painting.
Part 7, Chapters 150-157 Summary
When Patch returns, he has missed a movie date with Misty. She tells him she understands, but they need to stop now because she can’t head there any longer. He accepts this, but as he is leaving her house, he sees the young girl from the store in the window with Misty and realizes it is their daughter.
Misty introduces him to Charlotte, who is watching the Muppets. She tells him about the song “Rainbow Connection” and explains that Grace is his rainbow connection. Patch is filled with awe and tenderness for her and her mother. He asks Misty not to tell Charlotte who he is, and that he understands why she waited to tell him.
Patch tells Sammy the news and that he wants to sell paintings. He uses the money to tear down his old house and build a new one that looks like the one Grace described to him. Locals call it the “Mad House” and enjoy watching him struggle to do the work. He finally relents and lets Sammy hire people to help him so that the house will pass inspection. When the house is finished, he throws a huge party. At the party, Misty tells him that she is dying of cancer.
Part 7, Chapters 158-164 Summary
Misty gets rapidly worse, and Patch spends more and more time at the Meyer house. Mary, her mother, asks him if he will really stay or if he will leave them again. He insists that he has put down roots. Charlotte skips school one day, and Patch finds her. She tells him that she knows he is her father and says she will never belong to him. He agrees, understanding that she is lashing out, and tells her that it is unfair that Misty is sick.
Misty dies soon afterward, and Patch is shocked when he finds that she left Charlotte in his custody. He tells Saint he will not be a good father, but she insists that he will. He and Nix speak at Misty’s funeral, and Nix tells him that he has always hoped for good things for Patch and that he wants him to be happy.
Part 7, Chapters 165-171 Summary
Charlotte moves into the Mad House and initially refuses to make herself comfortable. However, she and Patch slowly warm to one another, and he takes her on trips to the library and walks to the gallery. At Sammy’s, he sets her up with paints, much to Sammy’s horror, and helps her learn to draw. When he receives word of another missing girl, he disrupts the routine and takes Charlotte out of school to go with him. Over the phone, Saint scolds him and tells him it is time to focus on Charlotte and let go of some of the survivor’s guilt.
In the motel with Charlotte, Patch tears up the address of the next place he was intending to look. He tells his sleeping daughter that he has room for her in his heart, knowing that this means he has lost Grace.
Part 8, Chapters 172-178 Summary
Patch settles in as a father to Charlotte, taking her to the movies and school. When she finally asks him about the missing girls, he tells her, and she makes a map plotting when and where they were taken. One evening, she is showing the map to Saint, who notices she used the name “Colorado’s Kingdom” in place of Breckenridge. Charlotte explains it is an older name, but she likes it better.
This triggers a memory for Saint, who rushes to listen to the old tapes Patch left her. She realizes that Grace mentioned “Colorado’s Kingdom,” and that she was leaving references to the missing girls in her conversations.
In New York, Sammy hosts a gallery show for Patch. His paintings sell well, and Charlotte is proud that The New York Times mentions him. Saint also attends the show, and Patch tells her he is glad that there are people like her still in the world.
Part 8, Chapters 179-186 Summary
After the show, Saint drives to the town of Black Rock, which the tapes mentioned. She finds a church, St. Mary Magdalene, and realizes the nuns all carry the same rosary beads that Aaron left with the girls. She speaks to an older nun, Sister Cecile, who recognizes Aaron as a troubled altar boy named Robert Peter Frederick. Another nun tells them that a man came and bought a set of the beads recently and recognizes Aaron in the photo. Saint meets with Hime, her FBI contact, explaining that Aaron isn’t dead and will kill again.
In Monta Clare, they celebrate Charlotte’s birthday. Saint buys her a beehive, and Patch takes her on a trip to the zoo, her favorite place. He faints in the snake room, triggered by the smell, which reminds him of being held by Aaron in the dark room. When he awakens, he is alone in a back room with Jimmy, who works there as a zookeeper. Jimmy insults Saint, and Patch reacts with rage.
Though the chapter ends there, the author later reveals that he shoves Jimmy, resulting in the other man falling, hitting his head, and dying.
Parts 7-8 Analysis
This section details Patch’s struggles to become a good father to Charlotte. When he learns of her existence, it immediately triggers his previous feelings of inadequacy. He thinks that he does “not dare think of Charlotte as his daughter, because she was only in the way that counted least” (377). Misty, however, urges him to spend time with her, and once he learns of Misty’s cancer diagnosis, he understands how important it is that he stay in Monta Clare. Though it is difficult, he says goodbye to his search for Grace, deciding to prioritize Charlotte. He eradicates many traces of his old life and builds a new home for them: “He was not a pirate. He was a thirty-year-old man with a criminal record” (379). Despite all his efforts, he still wonders if he is good enough for his daughter. Despite his decision to step up as a parent, he cannot fully accept his new role as a father. Notably, The Search for Identity seems incomplete since he has abandoned the hunt for Grace to prioritize raising Charlotte—a lack that will become clear to his daughter as the narrative continues.
Patch confides in Saint that he feels like he is “acting” rather than truly living: “When I’m being a father, when I’m being a friend. When I make something to eat or take a shower. I’m playing a part in a story deep down you know cannot end well” (427). This conviction that things won’t end well links to his attachment to the pirate identity. He jokes with Saint that he will end up on “a beach someplace far from here” (427). The Lasting Effects of Trauma have made Patch unable to live a normal life. Instead, he feels constantly torn between seeking out Grace and raising his daughter, between being the outlaw pirate and the stable father. Ironically, when he hits and accidentally kills Jimmy, severing him from Charlotte as he is imprisoned, he is thinking of fatherhood. He hurts Jimmy because he thinks that “he would not allow his daughter to grow up in a world where the good stand by idle” (444). This violence is motivated by his desire to protect Charlotte and Saint, “the few he cared about” (444). However, it winds up separating him from both, further contributing to the characters’ trauma.
Throughout this section, the symbol of the rainbow connection functions as a symbol of the characters’ longing for happiness. When Charlotte meets Patch, she introduces him to the song “Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie and tells him that it means “[e]veryone on this earth is placed here for someone else. You follow your dreams and find them, and you make a match and nothing else matters” (373). She believes that Grace is his rainbow connection. As she grows older and her father is imprisoned, she comes to believe that he will never prioritize her over Grace.
Significantly, the title of Part 2, “The Lovers and Dreamers,” is a line from the song, and this is the portion of the novel when Patch meets Grace. Despite Charlotte’s beliefs, Patch’s thoughts reveal that he loves his daughter and values her. The first time she sings the song for him, he feels fully content and thinks, “Right then, at that point, he could have pressed stop and their world would have shuddered and groaned and finally come to a close” (374). Importantly, Charlotte herself is misreading the lyrics of the song, which aren’t about one person being a match, but about pursuing one’s dreams and the search for meaning in life. Through this symbol, the author further cements the narrative’s thematic exploration of The Search for Identity.
