As Kit drives away from Hope's End with Carter, she explains the night's revelations: Mrs. Baker is really Lenora Hope, the bedridden woman is Virginia Hope, and Carter is not related to them because Virginia's baby was sent away years earlier. While they talk about Mary's death, Kit notices a contradiction in the timeline of the estate's gate and the grocery deliveries. That detail makes Kit realize Mary could have taken Virginia's blood to the lab a day early and returned with the results before she died.

Working through the timing, Kit decides Mary must have learned that Carter was not Virginia's grandson and told him. Kit concludes Carter killed Mary to hide the failed match and protect his chance of claiming Hope's End. She slams on the brakes, accuses Carter in the street, and threatens him with a corkscrew until he gets out of the car. Ignoring Carter's pleas that she is wrong, Kit speeds to her father's house and rushes inside.

Kit expects safety at home, but the house is empty. In her father's bedroom she finds a leather suitcase with a broken handle that she recognizes as Mary's. Inside are a blood sample and the stack of typewritten pages Virginia had been preparing, proving Mary brought crucial evidence back from Hope's End and that Kit's father somehow took it from her. As Kit reads, she realizes that the "Pat" she has always known is Patrick McDeere, the same man Virginia called Ricky.

Virginia's written confession reveals what happened the night of the original Hope family tragedy. Winston Hope had arranged for Miss Baker to take Virginia's baby away and for Patrick McDeere, the baby's father, to leave forever in exchange for money. When Virginia confronted them with a knife, her mother intervened, then turned on Winston after he smugly defended the same kind of payoff he had once used to control her. Virginia's mother stabbed Winston and also wounded herself.

The confession continues with Virginia's mother, already dying, provoking Ricky until he stabbed her as well. Ricky fled, Virginia held her mother as she died, threw the murder weapon into the ocean, and then tried to hang herself while Lenora called the police. The pages completely overturn Kit's belief that Virginia murdered both parents on her own and expose Ricky's hidden role in the Hope murders. Combined with Mary's suitcase in her father's room, the confession makes Kit understand that her own father is tied not only to Hope's End's oldest secret but also to Mary's death.