Spoiler warning — This article discusses Scotty’s death and the ending of Colleen Hoover’s novel Reminders of Him.
Ledger Ward helps Kenna Rowan because he comes to believe that Diem deserves the chance to know her mother. At first, protecting Scotty’s daughter means keeping Kenna away. Then Ledger sees how much Kenna cares about Diem and hears her account of the crash that killed Scotty. By the time he brings her letter to Scotty’s parents, he believes his best friend would have wanted Diem to grow up knowing how much her mother loves her.
Why Ledger initially sides with Scotty’s parents
Ledger knows what Scotty’s death did to Grace and Patrick Landry. He’s also part of the life they’ve built for Diem, whom they’ve raised while Kenna served five years in prison. He takes Diem to T-ball and goes to her dance recital. When Kenna comes back to town, Ledger has years of memories with Diem and very little to go on about the woman asking to see her.
One of the things he thinks he knows about Kenna comes from the courtroom. Ledger remembers her seeming unmoved during the proceedings and reads her silence as a lack of remorse. Kenna later tells him she was too devastated to speak about what happened. That difference matters because neither of them can forget the trial, yet each remembers her silence from a completely different position. Ledger watched it. Kenna had to live through it.
Ledger starts helping Kenna before he hears her letter
The grocery store parking lot shows how differently Ledger and the Landrys begin to see Kenna. Grace drives off with Diem before Kenna can reach them, and the encounter later helps prompt the Landrys to seek a restraining order. Afterward, Ledger shows Kenna a video of Diem. She tells him she’s glad her daughter has a loving home. She still wants to see the child she’s never had the chance to meet.
Ledger also gives Kenna shifts in his bar’s kitchen. There’s a limit to what he’s willing to risk at this point. He asks her to go by Nicole at work, and the money could help her leave town. He can see she needs help while still being afraid of what will happen if the Landrys find out he’s giving it.
Their attraction also complicates his judgment. He worries Kenna might have gotten close to him to reach Diem, and he knows pushing the Landrys could cost him his own place in her life. What gives the video scene its weight is that Ledger gets to see Kenna respond to the ordinary details of Diem’s life. He already knows the child in the video. For once, he gets to watch someone else discover her.
What Kenna’s letter about Scotty changes
When Kenna finally reads Ledger the letter she wrote to Scotty about the crash, she tells him she drove after drinking and fled because she believed Scotty was already dead. She later learned he had survived the crash for hours. That discovery helps Ledger understand what he saw at the trial. The silence he took for indifference came from someone who knew she had caused the crash and was now living with the knowledge that she could have called for help.
Hoover gives that account the form of a letter addressed to Scotty himself. Kenna wrote it as part of a private correspondence with someone who could never answer. Listening to it, Ledger has to make room for the fact that the man he lost was also the man Kenna loved. Her grief had been there the whole time, even when he couldn’t recognize it.
Ledger eventually sends himself Kenna’s letters from her phone without her permission and gives the Landrys the one about the crash. He knows he’s crossing a line. The novel leaves an uncomfortable question in that decision. Kenna chose to tell Ledger what happened, and he took it upon himself to decide who else would hear it.
Why helping Kenna becomes a way to honor Scotty
The clearest sign of Ledger’s change is what he asks of Grace and Patrick. He wants them to read Kenna’s account and consider what keeping her away means for Diem. Grace’s response reaches into a part of Scotty’s life Ledger never shared with him. She brings Kenna the engagement ring Scotty meant to give her, then invites her over to meet Diem. The ring lets Grace acknowledge how seriously her son took that relationship in a way only she can.
Two years later, Diem still lives with her grandparents and spends time with Kenna and Ledger, who live across the street. Kenna and Ledger name their son Scotty. That name gets the last word, but the living arrangement says just as much about why Ledger helped. Diem keeps the home where she grew up and gains a relationship with her mother. The promise Ledger felt toward his best friend’s daughter finally has room for both.
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