Summary
The timeline moves forward to summer seventeen. Cadence and Johnny are lying on the floor of Cuddledown and discussing what happened two years earlier. Johnny says people started leaving the island. Mirren and Gat join them to complete the memory. With the staff, aunts, younger cousins, and Granddad all off the island, the Liars drank the wine left in the fridge. They targeted Clairmont as the “seat of the patriarchy,” believing that the power would be gone if the house were gone. So they “burned that fucking palace to the ground.” Cadence wondered whether they could take control and stop being the beautiful Sinclair family, becoming just a regular family united by love. She believed they would be heroes for not letting the family fall apart.
The plan was to use the gas in cans in the boathouse. Light every floor of Clairmont to ensure it burned. They would say they were watching a movie at Cuddledown and didn’t notice until it was too late. They were confident that even if they were found out, the family wouldn’t press charges. The Liars tell Cadence they thought they were doing good, but things at New Clairmont aren’t better. The aunts cry. Granddad purposefully rebuilt a place without possessions, devoid of life, for the same reason Cadence has been giving away her things.
After the other Liars fall asleep, Cadence goes out and finds her mother. She asks why she told the family not to talk about the fire with Cadence. Her mother is surprised she remembers and asks if there is anything else coming back. Cadence says no. Her mother says the doctors didn’t want to add more stress to Cadence’s life. She gets angry, saying she isn’t a child. Her mother attempts to be tender, and says she worries about how fragile Cadence still is, but Cadence pulls away.
Cadence goes to her room and types up some memories from her graph paper. She realizes that Fatima and Prince Phillip, her grandfather’s golden retrievers, were locked upstairs in a room and burned in the fire. Cadence knows it was her fault because she should have known they were up there. In tears, she runs outside and Gat is waiting. They talk about what else she isn’t remembering. She wants to know why they weren’t together when her accident happened. He tells her he has to go back to Cuddledown, and apologizes for having kissed her—for everything he did to show her affection. She whispers that she loves him, and he pulls back. He says he is sorry: he just wanted to see her. He turns and leaves.
Cadence remembers the hospital on Martha’s Vineyard, where she went after the accident. Her mother and grandfather looked down at her. Her hands and feet were bandaged because they were burned.
In Part Five, “Truth,” Cadence reveals “the truth as Granddad knows it.” This is the truth he kept out of the newspapers. Gat, Mirren, and Johnny perished in a house fire caused by a jug of motorboat fuel that overturned in the mudroom. Cadence was present on the island. She sustained burns on her hands when she realized people and animals were trapped inside the burning house. She phoned the fire department from another house on the island. When help arrived, she was half underwater on the shore, having suffered a head injury. She wasn’t well enough to attend the funerals. She had no memory of the fire, exhibiting selective amnesia. Doctors advised her mother to stop explaining the tragedy and to let Cadence remember in her own time.
Cadence remembers how they lit the fire. The last thing she said to the Liars were instructions not to get any gas on their clothing. Cadence remembers soaking everything on the ground floor with gas and then starting a fire in the study. The books burned quickly, and then she could hear screams from the upper levels. Flames burned her jeans as she scrambled through the smoke to get out.
Outside, the entire ground floor was on fire and the upper levels were beginning to burn as well. She rolled on the grass and waited for the others, but they were still inside and there was no way to save them. An icy feeling spreads through Cadence’s body as she feels the remorse of having killed the Liars. She knows she never should have encouraged them to set the fire, shouldn’t have started it in the study, shouldn’t have suggested they split up to douse the house. She realizes they have been here at Cuddledown because she needed them.
Cadence and the Liars go down to the shore to say goodbye. Gat kisses Cadence for the last time and dives into the water in all his clothes. They swim away, leaving Cadence alone on the beach. Cadence sleeps for what might be days. When she gets out of bed, she goes to the kitchen at the New Clairmont. Ed is there, and everyone else. She finds a Sharpie and writes "Be a little kinder" on her hands.
Cadence goes to Edgartown with Granddad that afternoon. Cadence comments on Ed being back, and says he doesn’t like Ed much. Granddad concedes that he doesn’t, but Ed is here. The next day Cadence cleans up Cuddledown. She finds a crayon drawing of the Liars and puts it up on the fridge. The novel closes with Cadence returning to her opening narration. She says her full name—Cadence Sinclair Eastman—and that she lives in Burlington with her mother and three dogs, and that she is nearly eighteen. She says, “I am the perpetrator of a foolish, deluded crime that became a tragedy.”
Analysis
Johnny’s and Cadence’s extended discussion of what happened during summer fifteen continues with further recovered memories. Gat and Mirren lie down with Cadence and Johnny to help narrate the details that Cadence’s trauma-induced amnesia erased. In a retaliation against Harris, who had been wielding his patriarchal authority over the family, the Liars burned his house on the island. In this way, they sought to manipulate the circumstances, hoping that drastic action could reset the mood for everyone and prevent the family’s disintegration.
However, the Liars concede that their plan didn’t bring about the desired result. Believing she has the whole story now, Cadence leaves the Liars to speak with her mother. In a rare moment of tenderness, Penny gently discusses how the doctors advised her not to discuss the fire with Cadence, and prompts her to relate any more memories that have come back. Cadence is angry that she is being treated like a child.
Up in her room, Cadence consults her graph papers, which unburden her injured brain by keeping her memory fragments in one place. She remembers something else: her grandfather’s dogs died in the house. As her mother predicted, the revelation upsets Cadence, causing her to cry and run to Gat for support. Gat, however, maintains the emotional boundary he has established for reasons still unknown to Cadence.
In the final part of the book, Cadence recovers the last missing piece of her memory. It wasn’t just the dogs who died in the fire; the Liars died too. Acting especially careless because of the alcohol they consumed in preparation for torching the house, Cadence and the Liars didn’t coordinate the arson well enough to keep everyone safe. Because she lit the ground floor on fire before the others could get out, Cadence inadvertently killed Johnny, Mirren, and Gat. With this revelation, Cadence understands that their spirit projections have been hanging around Cuddledown because she needed their support as she slowly came to terms with what happened.
Having finally come out of her denial and accepted her responsibility for the Liars’ deaths, Cadence can say goodbye to her cousins and Gat. Wishing her no ill will, the Liars depart Beechwood by swimming into the ocean and disappearing, leaving Cadence alone with her grief and her restored memory. After a long rest, Cadence rejoins her family. There is a bittersweet sense of resolution as she discusses Ed being a part of the family despite her grandfather’s wishes. But while Cadence has come to terms with what happened, she moves back under the veneer of perfection her family maintains, keeping the shameful secret to herself.
