“The man in the gray suit thought about that. ‘Well, that’s the thing about knots, isn’t it?’ he replied after a moment. ‘If you don’t know the trick, it’s a muddled predicament. But in fact each loop of every knot is carefully placed, one end twisting right into the other in a way you might not have expected.’”

The man in the gray suit’s words to Mason Burgess connect to the novel’s title and the theme of Destiny Versus Chance. The man with the knot-tying Talent symbolizes fate. Both knots and fate may look like “a muddled predicament” before one becomes aware of how each piece “is carefully placed” as part of the whole. This excerpt foreshadows how the seemingly random events of the plot and the characters’ lives weave together throughout the mystery novel in unexpected ways.

“Somehow, for some reason that Cady couldn’t explain, the fault lay with her. And Cady vowed that if she ever got another chance, with another family, she would do whatever it took to make it work. One day she would have an Adoption Day party of her own. One day she would bake the perfect cake for herself.”

This passage develops the protagonist’s characterization and the theme of Family Connections. The lonely, people-pleasing Cady dreams of being adopted at the start of the story and feels that “the fault lay with her” for not finding a perfect family yet. For much of the novel, Cady feels that she must prioritize others’ happiness over her own so that she can merit a family. In time, she learns to value her own needs and desires.

“Day in and day out, the only constant Miss Mallory had come to count on was Cady.”

This excerpt develops the theme of Family Connections by illustrating the protagonist’s great importance to Miss Mallory. This appears at a bittersweet moment when Miss Mallory thinks that the girl’s perfect family is on their way to adopt her.