Spoilers Off applies to all Tear Jerker pages, so all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Rot and Ruin
- Tom's reaction when Benny calls him a killer and says he's no better than the other sadistic bounty hunters. Not only does it strike at the heart of his own self-loathing about what he does, but it must also hurt like hell that the kid he raised since infancy has such a low opinion of him. It's the first time we see him lose his cool.Tom: Shut up! You just shut your damn mouth! You don't know who I am or what I am. You don't know what I've done. You don't know the things I've had to do to keep you safe. To keep us safe. You don't know what I -
- When Benny learns what it is Tom really does as a bounty hunter: he tracks down his clients' zombified loved ones and 'quiets' them, gently and respectfully, after reading out a goodbye letter from their families. The letter from Claire to her husband Harold has the usually flippant Benny crying openly.Tom: This is what I do, Benny.
- Jessie Riley's death - beaten to death by Charlie Pinkeye, knowing that her daughter's going to be dragged away to Gameland to probably die in a zom pit, a fate Jessie almost suffered herself. And then Tom has to quiet her after she dies in his arms, so she doesn't come back as a zom. Made even sadder in later books when we learn that she and Tom were in love with each other and he was planning to propose to her...
- Tom's 'death' - although it turns out later that he survived and makes a Big Damn Heroes entrance to save Benny and Nix - is heartbreaking because Benny has finally started feeling close to his brother after years of resenting him.
- At the end of the book, Tom and Benny go to Sunset Hollow, where their family lived before First Night, and finally put their zombie parents to rest. It's a heartbreaking, heartbreaking moment.Benny: I love you, Mom.
- And after, Benny realises that Tom didn't actually run off and abandon their mother to be killed by their newly zombified father all those years ago - because their mom had already been bitten and was on her way to becoming a zom. He spent all his life hating his brother for nothing... and Tom never corrected him, knowing his brother would never believe the truth.
Dust and Decay
- In one of Nix's journal entries, she talks about how Jessie made a silk and leather covering for the handle of Tom's katana after the old one fell apart.Mom really loved Tom. I miss her. So does Tom.
Flesh and Bone
- Benny, cornered in a ravine by hoards of zoms, convinced he's about to die, screams out for his dead brother."Tom!" he yelled. "You left me! You were supposed to be there. You were supposed to keep the monsters away."Despite the anger, his voice was small. Younger than his years."You weren't supposed to let me see this."
- Lilah's flashback to the time she confessed her feelings to Tom, who gently let her down and then told her about how he'd been in love with Jessie Riley, who died in Rot and Ruin. It's not something we ever see him discuss with Benny or Nix, and it's a side to the normally stoic Tom that we never saw when he was alive. The worst part is when he admits he'd been planning on proposing and had even commissioned a ring from a silversmith in a neighbouring town.Tom: Jessie had my heart, Lilah. And... when she died, I think that part of me died with her. I don't think I'll ever love anyone else. Not like that.Lilah: In the books, people heal. They get over it.Tom: Other people, maybe. But - those books were written before First Night.
- With Tom now dead, Lilah wonders if he and Jessie have been reunited in the afterlife. She hopes so.
