Tommy Tuttle

Tommy Tuttle, Tammy Tuttle’s twin, is known through two sharply different traces: Marilyn Warluski’s memories of the twins’ childhood violence and Moses Grace’s grief-stricken claim that Tommy was killed. Together, these fragments make Tommy both part of a family history of abuse and a crucial link in the investigation into Moses Grace’s past.

Family and Background

Tommy grew up with Tammy in Lucas City, a farming town about fifteen miles from Dalton, where their cousin Marilyn Warluski lived with her mother. Marilyn recalled that the twins lived with their mother, whose name was Cordelia Tuttle, and that there were no fathers around in the children’s lives, although both mothers had been married. The account situates Tommy in a family marked by absent parents and tangled ties, but offers little direct information about his life beyond the family’s recollections.

Childhood and Relationship with Marilyn

Marilyn remembered Tommy and Tammy as alike in temperament, describing them as copies of their mother. When the twins visited, they beat Marilyn; she tried hiding from them, but they always found and walloped her anyway. Her mother treated these assaults as something Marilyn had to endure to become tougher, telling her that keeping her neck was enough. The recollection gives Tommy a concrete place in Marilyn’s childhood: he was not merely a relative who appeared at visits, but one of the children who repeatedly made those visits frightening.

Moses Grace and Tommy’s Fate

Tommy’s significance resurfaces when Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock consider whether Moses Grace might be the twins’ grandfather. Their questions turn on the fact that Moses has not mentioned Tommy, even though the known family connections include the twins’ cousin Marilyn. Later, during the pursuit of Moses, he recalls seeing Tommy and Tammy for the last time, says he gave Tammy a wad of cash, and says he then left for Canada. He accuses Dillon Savich of butchering Tommy and of shooting off Tammy’s arm. These are Moses’s claims, voiced in a moment of anger and grief; the account establishes his accusation, not an independent description of Tommy’s death.

Narrative Role

Moses identifies Marilyn as the only person left who knew about Tommy and Tammy’s history, and threatens to find her and have Claudia attack her before he kills her himself. Tommy’s past therefore reaches into the present through the danger it creates for Marilyn. His remembered violence toward her and Moses’s anguished accusation do not resolve into a complete biography; instead, they leave Tommy as a pivotal absence, whose fate and family connections help expose how much of Moses’s history remains concealed.