If Only I Had Told Her

The candy that Finn gets for Autumn is a symbol of his unwavering devotion to her. Finn knows it is her favorite, so after they have sex for the first time, he goes to the only gas station in town that sells the candy: He knows how anxious Autumn is that he will remain with Sylvie, so he buys all the candy the store stocks as a sign of his commitment to Autumn. Notably, that gas station employs a cashier who leers at Autumn when she is not looking and attempts to engage Finn in inappropriate conversations about her. This gives Finn an additional way to prove his love for Autumn, as he confronts the cashier about his behavior.

Finn’s death prevents him from giving his present to Autumn, and the candy only resurfaces when Jack cleans out Finn’s car. Jack struggles through much of his portion of the novel with whether he should give the candy to Autumn. He initially withholds it because of his resentment toward Autumn, symbolically keeping Finn’s final gesture of love from her. It is only when he forgives Autumn that he gives her the candy that Finn wanted her to have. In this way, Jack acknowledges her importance to Finn, as even at the very end of his life, Finn was thinking about Autumn.

After Jack gives the bag of candy to Autumn, she does not eat any of it. Her immediate inclination is to hoard the candy and thus keep a piece of Finn with her. During her pregnancy, however, she develops a craving for it and eats some so that the baby can have a treat. This is a small way for Autumn to encourage a connection between her baby and Finn.

The memory book is a way for Autumn and John to allow Autumn and Finn’s daughter to build a positive connection with Finn, introducing her to her father through the memories of those around him. As Autumn states, “Together, we built another inheritance for Phineus’s child” (377). However, it also helps Autumn process her grief. After Finn died, Autumn attempted to avoid the truth of his death and to pretend that he was still alive by speaking to him in his casket and pretending that Jack was actually Finn. These daydreams did not help her mourn Finn. Instead, Autumn is ultimately able to process her grief productively through her connections with other people. Finn’s memory becomes something that she accesses through her relationships with others, and the memory book encapsulates and symbolizes that mode of remembering.

By contrast, John—who spent Finn’s entire life ignoring his son—is grieving a son that he never truly knew. He attempts to connect with those around his son because his son is no longer there for him to speak to. John does not collect these stories about his son with a bigger project in mind, but his efforts to learn about Finn give Autumn the idea to combine the stories with the photographs that Jack is collecting and create a lasting legacy for Finn.