“The mending of broken hearts”

The mending of broken hearts is the closing expression of the novel, turning its recurring puzzles into an image of grief that may resist every solution. As Kirsty receives Lemarchand’s Configuration, she considers what the box can reveal—and what it cannot—before accepting that some losses may remain beyond the reach of either ingenuity or time.

The phrase and its puzzle imagery

The expression appears as Kirsty imagines that another puzzle might someday give access to the place where Rory is. The box in her hand is polished and resealed, with no solution left visible; its next discoverer will have to travel its surfaces without a chart. Kirsty wonders whether a different puzzle might open a route to Rory, offering a crossword or a jigsaw as possibilities. These are imagined examples, not solutions the story confirms. Their purpose is to make longing resemble the work of decipherment: a hidden answer might exist, but finding it cannot be guaranteed.

Recognition, absence, and the box

The ending’s uncertainty is set against earlier revelations about identity. In the Damp room, Julia discovers that Frank is present in the house, confined behind the wall and able to make only limited contact. Later, Kirsty recognizes that the figure appearing as Rory is Frank, while Rory’s corpse remains elsewhere in the house. The false appearance is exposed, but recognition does not undo the loss or settle where Rory is. At the close, Kirsty turns the box over and sees Julia and Frank in its lacquer, but not Rory. The object that once offered a route into danger therefore becomes a focus for questions it cannot answer.

An unresolved ending

Kirsty resolves to wait and watch, as she has before, for a puzzle that may never come. Her refusal to grieve too deeply is conditional rather than a declaration that she has recovered: she fears that repairing broken hearts may be a problem neither wit nor time can solve. The final expression gathers the novel’s puzzle motif into an emotional limit. Some enigmas invite persistence; this one leaves open whether persistence can restore what has been lost.