Conclusion

In Chapter 43, Sal asks the sheriff if he remembers Mrs. Cadaver. He says everyone remembers Margaret. Nine hours after the bus rolled down the mountainside, when bodies were being carried from the wreckage, Margaret had raised her hand through a window. Sal reveals to the sheriff that she’d talked to Margaret the day after Mrs. Winterbottom returned home. Margaret says John had visited her in the hospital, the only survivor of the crash, and once he knew that Margaret had been sitting beside Sugar, they’d talked for hours. This prompted their friendship and was the reason John had chosen to move nearer Margaret. Margaret explains that John had merely needed to get away from the memories of Sugar that were haunting him at their Kentucky home. Margaret also says that John didn’t tell Sal how he met Margaret for fear that Sal would hate Margaret for surviving the crash that took Sugar’s life.