The Locket in Notes on an Execution: A Symbol of Maternal Legacy and Breaking Cycles

What the Locket Is

The locket is a small piece of jewelry that belonged to Lavender's mother, passed down through the women of the family. It first appears in Lavender's 2002 chapter, where she carries it in a pocket sewn into the interior of every garment she owns. In the dim city light of San Francisco, it looks worn and haunted. Lavender reflects that she could not bear to clasp it around her neck, but she also could not bear to set it down.

The locket was originally promised to Lavender's child. She thinks of it as the charm she'd promised to her child then accidentally stolen away. This phrasing is significant: Lavender intended to pass the locket to her son Ansel, but the circumstances of her escape from Johnny Packer meant the gift never reached him. The locket carries the weight of that unfulfilled promise—a maternal inheritance meant to be given but never was.

Where the Locket Appears

The locket appears in two key scenes, seventeen years apart. In 2002, Lavender carries it to San Francisco, where she meets Cheryl Harrison and learns about the life her son Ellis has built. The locket is present during her encounter with the photographs of Ellis, his wife, and their daughter Blue—the family Lavender will never join. After the gallery, Lavender stands at the waterfront and reaches into her pocket, finding the locket worn and haunted in the dim city light. This is the moment she confronts the full weight of what she lost: the love she had for her own child, which she describes as biological, primal, and evolutionary.

In 2019, the locket reappears in Lavender's final chapter. She reaches into her sweater pocket and finds her mother's locket, described as shabby and decrepit in the dim light of the Blue House bar. This is the moment she decides to give it away. She asks Blue, Will you take this with you? and Blue clasps it around her neck, the chain glistening along her collarbone. Lavender watches and thinks it is like looking in a mirror at a younger self—glittering, golden, blessedly unbroken.

The Locket's Shifting Meaning

Across these two appearances, the locket's meaning transforms. In 2002, it is an object of grief and unresolved love—a reminder of the child Lavender could not keep and the promise she could not fulfill. She carries it hidden in a sewn pocket, neither able to wear it nor let it go. The locket is a private burden, a physical manifestation of the love she could not express to Ansel.

By 2019, the locket becomes an object of transmission. Lavender gives it to Blue, her granddaughter, who will wear it to witness Ansel's execution. The locket moves from being a symbol of what was lost to a symbol of what might be carried forward. Blue is blessedly unbroken—she has not been damaged by the violence that shaped Lavender's life and Ansel's. By wearing the locket, Blue carries the family's maternal legacy into the execution chamber, a quiet counterweight to the state's machinery of death.

The locket also connects to Lavender's unsent letters to Ansel. Throughout her life, Lavender writes letters in her head—Dear Ansel. My love. My heart. My little boy.—but never sends them. The locket is like those letters: a message that was meant to reach Ansel but never did. When Lavender gives the locket to Blue, she is finally entrusting that message to someone who can carry it forward.

Character and Theme Connections

The locket is deeply tied to Lavender's arc as a mother who saved herself but could not save her children. Her decision to call 911 and escape Johnny Packer was necessary for her survival, but it meant leaving Ansel and his brother to the foster care system. The locket embodies that trade-off: the love she carried but could not deliver.

For Blue, the locket represents a choice. Blue has agreed to witness Ansel's execution, telling Lavender that he's family and someone should be there. By wearing the locket, Blue connects her act of witnessing to the maternal line—she is not just a witness for Ansel, but a representative of the women who loved him imperfectly. The locket transforms the execution from a purely institutional event into a moment of family presence.

The locket also connects to the novel's broader themes. It speaks to the ripple effects of violence across generations: the locket passes from a mother who could not save her son to a granddaughter who witnesses his death. It touches on the moral weight of witnessing, as Blue's act of wearing the locket is itself a form of testimony. And it resonates with victim erasure and women's voices, as the locket is a women's object, passed among women, carrying a story that the justice system cannot tell.

The locket also stands in contrast to the objects Ansel collects from his victims. Where Ansel takes jewelry as souvenirs—the ring he takes from the third Girl, the beaded barrette and pearl bracelet Hazel finds buried—the locket is given freely, passed with love rather than taken by force. This contrast underscores the difference between violence and legacy, between taking and giving.

Study Questions

1. Why does Lavender carry the locket in a sewn pocket rather than wearing it?

Lavender's sewn pocket reflects her relationship to the locket and to motherhood itself. She cannot wear the locket because doing so would mean openly claiming the maternal identity she had to abandon. But she also cannot set it down, because the love it represents is chronic and unbanishable—it lives inside her regardless of her choices. The hidden pocket is a compromise: she carries the locket close to her body, but keeps it concealed, just as she carries her love for Ansel privately, in unsent letters she never mails.

2. What does the locket's journey from Lavender to Blue suggest about breaking cycles of violence?

The locket's transfer represents a break in the cycle of violence that shaped Ansel's life. Lavender could not give the locket to Ansel—her escape from Johnny Packer made that impossible, and Ansel grew up without the maternal inheritance that might have grounded him. By giving the locket to Blue, Lavender entrusts it to a generation that has not been broken by that violence. Blue wears it into the execution chamber, carrying the family's love into the very place where the cycle ends. The locket suggests that legacy can be redirected: what Lavender could not give her son, she can give her granddaughter.

3. How does the locket connect to Lavender's unsent letters to Ansel?

Both the locket and the letters are messages that never reached Ansel. Lavender writes Dear Ansel letters in her head for decades but never sends them, just as she carries the locket in her pocket but never gives it to her son. The locket and the letters are parallel expressions of the same unresolved love—a love that had no outlet. When Lavender gives the locket to Blue, she is finally releasing that love into the world, entrusting it to someone who can carry it to Ansel's deathbed, even if Ansel himself never knows the locket was meant for him.

4. Why does Lavender describe Blue wearing the locket as like looking in a mirror at a younger self?

The mirror image suggests that Blue represents what Lavender might have been without the trauma of Johnny Packer and the loss of her children. Blue is unbroken in a way Lavender never was—she has not been shaped by the violence that defined Lavender's early life. The locket, which Lavender could not wear, looks natural on Blue. The image is bittersweet: Lavender sees in Blue the wholeness she never achieved, but she also sees that her own suffering made Blue's wholeness possible. The locket passes from broken hands to unbroken ones, carrying the family's love forward even as its original promise remains unfulfilled.