Chapters 26-30 Summary

During her absence from school, Mrs. Brook calls Caitlin at school to ask how she is and offer encouragement; she also urges her to keep trying to enlist her father in the chest completion project, as a way for them both to reach closure. Caitlin runs into Josh, her full-time critic, in the principal's office and he mutters under his breath, "Loser." But she replies affirmatively by saying she will keep trying to get everything right. Another encounter with her sometime-friend Michael ends abruptly. When she goes home, Caitlin again confronts her father about the chest. He says they can't do any work on it until they have the right wood——quarter-cut oak. Caitlin tries to figure out how to cut oak with a quarter and wonders whether one of the coins from her collection of quarters would do...