The Girl on the Train Chapter 19 Summary

How It All Goes Down

Rachel

  • Rachel, who can't let anything go, phones Scott and asks if he knows Anna.
  • Scott invites Rachel to come by that afternoon, so she does.
  • He tells her that Megan did some babysitting for Tom and Anna, but they didn't ever seem to get along.
  • When Scott asks Rachel why she's asking about Anna, Rachel says she thought she saw Anna the night Megan went missing.
  • Scott gets angry—he doesn't understand how Rachel could have seen Anna but not Megan.
  • He throws a chair. He's also mad because he's a suspect now that Kamal has been released.
  • Apparently Kamal told the police that Scott was an "emotional abuser" (19.40).
  • Maybe he was—he tells Rachel the last thing he ever said to Megan was, "Go to hell you lying bitch" (19.44). Via text message. Charming.
  • Scott calms down and tells Rachel to let him know if she remembers anything.
  • This prompts Rachel to want to unlock her memories even more, and she considers seeing a therapist, "someone like Kamal Abdic" (19.62).
  • So she makes an appointment to see the good doctor.
  • At her appointment, she tells him a lot of truth about herself and the dissolution of her relationship.
  • She hopes that when she reveals that Tom had an affair, Kamal might look guilty somehow. But he doesn't.
  • So Rachel hasn't miraculously exposed the man as a murderer, but on the upside, the therapy actually seems to be helping.
  • She makes an appointment to go back, even though she thinks he has a creepy smile and that she can "see the killer in him when he shows his teeth" (19.106). Are they filed to sharp points or something?
  • That night, Rachel has a dream that she did something wrong but she doesn't know what.
  • The dream leads her to thinking about how she and Tom tried to have a baby via in-vitro fertilization—it didn't work, and Rachel was devastated.
  • They didn't have enough money to try again, but Tom took what money they did have and went to Vegas for four days.
  • Rachel screamed at Tom, called him selfish, and broke their wedding photo.
  • Rachel puts an end to the pity party and heads outside.
  • Uh-oh… She sees a tabloid newspaper and buys it because of the headline: "WAS MEGAN A CHILD KILLER?" (19.117). Whelp, looks like the dead baby is out of the bag.