Safe Haven

Katie and the children take their showers and share a dinner of pasta before settling down to watch Finding Nemo. When the movie ends, Katie takes the children to their beds, cleans up their dinner dishes, and settles down to wait for Alex. As she drifts to sleep, she recalls the view from the Ferris wheel and a man “who’d been moving like a hunter through the brush” (295).

Kevin drinks as he watches the windows of the house, seeing Erin’s profile in the window. He imagines her inside with her lover and thinks of passages from the Bible that discuss infidelity. As he pumps gas into his car, he thinks of how fire always purifies in the Bible, and this gives him an idea.

Alex is driving back from Raleigh, anxious to see Katie. Meanwhile, Katie is in bed dreaming.

Kevin enters the store just before closing time, buys two gas cans, and pumps them full of gas. He hides the cans in the grass and drinks as he waits for the store to close.

Alex reaches Wilmington. His anticipation ramps up as he thinks of Katie waiting for him.

When the store is closed, Kevin retrieves the gas cans. He struggles with his vision, telling himself he isn’t drunk even though the signs are all there. He knocks over a garbage can.

Katie momentarily wakes at the sound of the garbage can crash, but she quickly goes back to sleep and dreams of Jo.

While imagining Erin upstairs with her lover, Kevin splashes gas all over the side of the house and the store. He breaks a window and enters the store, cutting his hands and arm in the process. He turns on the grill at the back of the store and lays Roger’s apron across it. He uses lighter fluid to soak the walls around the grill and all around the store. In minutes, the store is completely ablaze.

In her dream, Jo tries to point out a man in the crowd below the Ferris wheel to Katie. Jo asks, “Can you smell it” (305)? Katie suddenly wakes and realizes the house is on fire. She rushes to Josh’s room and pulls him out of bed. She drags him to Kristen’s room and then takes both children to the master bedroom. The fire is moving quickly. Katie breaks the window open with a rocking chair and wraps the kids in a comforter before jumping out onto an overhang.

Alex drops Joyce off at her house and turns toward home. He notices a orange glow in the distance.

Katie carefully lowers Josh over the edge of the overhang and drops him to the ground. She does the same with Kristen. When Katie jumps, she thinks they are safe, but then she spots Kevin.

Alex rushes toward the store, convinced something is very wrong.

Katie faces Kevin, who has a gun. She speaks to him sweetly, trying to distract him as she approaches. She yells for the kids to run as she charges him, pushing his arm up as he fires the gun. The kids run toward Katie’s cottage as she struggles with Kevin, fighting back for the first time. Kevin loses the gun and Katie lunges for it.

Alex spots the kids on the side of the road. They tell him a brief version of what happened. He quickly takes them to Katie’s cottage and rushes toward the store.

Kevin secures the gun and drags Katie to the car, but she manages to get away. Kevin fires at her, but the shot misses. He stumbles after Erin and decides he must kill her.

Katie sees Alex arrive at the store. She runs toward him, but he roars past her and drives right toward Kevin.

Kevin raises the gun to shoot again, but the jeep clips him, breaking his hand and causing the gun to go flying. Kevin hears sirens. He jumps in his car and drives off.

Katie goes to Alex where he has crashed into a shed. She pauses to pick up Kevin’s gun and then tries to help Alex out, but the jeep is too deeply wedged into the shed. He tells her the kids are at her cottage. Katie panics because that is the direction in which Kevin has gone.

Kevin drives down the gravel road and parks behind Jo’s cottage. He is aware he is bleeding, but he doesn’t know why. He is very tired and closes his eyes.

Alex manages to get the jeep free of the shed. He and Katie race down the road to the cottage.

Kevin hears the jeep approaching. He removes a crowbar from the trunk.

Alex and Katie find the kids safe inside the cottage. Kevin arrives while they are distracted and hits Alex on the head with the crowbar.

Katie rushes toward Kevin with his gun in hand and they struggle. When Katie asks Kevin why he hurt her, he babbles about the boy with pizza sauce on his forehead and the lack of footprints in the snow. As they struggle, the gun gets caught between them. Kevin pulls the trigger, thinking the muzzle of the gun is pointed at Katie. Instead, it is pressed against his stomach. Kevin falls back and dies as Katie watches: “She realized then that it was finally, truly, over” (321).

Aside from bruises and a swollen knee, Katie is unharmed. Alex spends the night and most of the day in the hospital, but he is fine as well. After Alex is released, he and Katie go to the store where the firemen find Alex’s safe. Alex is pleased and tells Katie, “There’s something in there for you, too” (328).

Katie visits Jo, whose cottage is in an unrecognizable state of neglect. She remembers seeing Jo fix a shutter and hang a wind chime from the rafters. However, the wind chime is not there, the shutter has fallen off, the windows are broken, and it is clear no one has been inside the cottage in a very long time. Although Katie believes “Jo was real” (330), she begins to wonder if the woman was a figment of her imagination. 

Back in her own cottage, Katie reads the letter Alex gave her. Carly wrote the letter in the weeks before her death. Katie comes to a shocking realization when she reads, “My name, as you probably know, is Carly, but for most of my life, my friends called me Jo” (334). Katie finally puts it all together: The woman she thought she lived next door to was Carly Jo Wheatley, Alex’s wife. She reads the rest of the letter and is touched by Carly’s love for her family and her desire to see them happy again. Carly ends the letter by saying, “if Alex has chosen you, then I want you to believe that I have chosen you as well” (339). Those words ring true for Katie because she knows that she has met Carly, and Carly did choose her.