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Summary: Chapter 9
Cadence found herself still loving Gat but held back her feelings, until one day he declared his love for her while they were going through some old books in her attic.
Summary: Chapter 10
As Cadence and Gat began to kiss, Granddad walked in, unannounced. He apologized for interrupting but told Gat he should watch himself. Cadence took the remark as a caution to Gat not to hit his head on the sloped ceiling, but Gat knew it was a warning to stay away from Cadence. Gat responded by going downstairs. Later, Cadence found him outside, upset, and kissed him again.
Summary: Chapter 11
Granny had died the previous fall, and Granddad was in decline. The Sinclairs try to avoid talking about Granny after her death, but Gat wants to share fond memories.
Summary: Chapters 12–13
Cadence’s accident came in July. She doesn’t remember much, but apparently she went swimming alone, hit her head on some rocks, and was found curled up on the beach, shivering. She was briefly hospitalized for hypothermia, pneumonia, and a possible head injury. Weeks later, she began having migraines. Testing produced a diagnosis of post-traumatic headache disorder, with warnings not to overuse her pain medication (later revealed to be Percocet). Throughout her ordeal, she heard nothing from the Liars. Gat’s silence was especially hurtful.
Summary: Chapter 14
Arrangements on the island were disrupted as Granddad remodeled the house that he and Granny had lived in. Cadence’s emails to Johnny and Mirren during the Europe tour went unanswered.
Summary: Chapter 15
For summer sixteen, Cadence’s father insisted on taking her on a grand tour of Europe. Her mother approved. The backstory narrative ends with Cadence’s return to Vermont. She attends school but admits that the other students are disturbed by her appearance and migraine episodes, and that she frequently visits the nurse’s office. At home, she discovers that Penny is keeping track of Cadence’s food intake.
Analysis
Gat’s presence continues to disturb what passes for balance among the Sinclairs on Beechwood Island as Harris catches Gat and Cadence kissing. More awkwardly, Cadence doesn’t understand that Harris warns him not to get involved with Harris Sinclair’s granddaughter. Worse, Cadence doesn’t understand Harris’s implications as he reminisces about her love for Cracker Jacks. Harris has always gone to great lengths to make sure his granddaughter gets what she wants. His walk down memory lane serves as a promise that he will continue to do so, with a veiled threat that he can just as easily rob her of her heart’s desire.
Cadence’s description of Gran is certainly nostalgic, but it should also be interpreted in light of who the Sinclairs are. Gran had collections of seemingly everything, from plants to fabric, and she treated it all with the same carelessness she treated her evening gown. Cadence’s lingering over Gran’s fabric collection is characteristic of the young girl’s tendency toward the extreme and her hyperbolic descriptions of herself and her emotions. Penny’s repeated warnings to Cadence to be quiet, act normal, and stop drawing attention to herself can be read as cold or hard, but they can also be interpreted as practical advice to a young, self-indulgent child.
Gat continues to mark himself as different from the Sinclairs in that he is the only one who chooses to remember the people who have died or otherwise left. He thinks nothing of bringing up Gran or Cadence’s father and seems oblivious to the pain doing so causes others. Meanwhile, Cadence and the Sinclairs seem oblivious to the fact that reminiscing about loved ones is normal behavior, or that physical absence does not equate to metaphysical nonexistence. Closing one’s eyes and ears does not change reality, a fact the Sinclairs are happy to ignore.
Another fact Cadence is happy to ignore is Gat’s pain, and not only in the matter of her family’s prejudice. She relies on Gat to nurture and sustain her, to tend to the bruises and wounds she sustained because of her father’s departure. But Gat’s father is dead, and she never shows him the same level of tenderness and care. Similarly, she and the other Lairs treat Gat’s visit to India, the land of his ancestors, with boredom and disrespect. Yet the Liars are fascinated by Cadence’s visit to Europe, the land of their ancestors. The obvious privileging of one experience over the other is simply one part of the reason Gat can never feel at home on Beechwood Island with the Sinclairs. More problematically, it constitutes the very reason Cadence feels most at home there.
In Chapter 12, we learn what Cadence remembers of the accident, the details of which suggest sexual assault. She assumes that she swam out and hit her head on a rock, but the reader should by now be aware that Cadence’s assumptions are not to be trusted. She assumed that her grandfather wasn’t being a prejudiced jerk, that her trip to Europe was more fascinating than Gat’s to India, and that Gat didn’t need a shoulder to cry on. In the aftermath, her most pressing concern is not the effect Cadence’s accident had on her mother or her extended family, not the absence of her cousins, not the extensive memory loss that causes her mother to repeat basic facts. Instead, her obsession is that Gat has left her, just like her father did.
The picture that Cadence paints in Chapters 13–15 is one of isolation, ironically in places away from Beechwood Island. She treats as lonely, disaffected and surreal her home with her mother in Burlington, Vermont, her grand tour of Europe with her father, and her high school experience. She longs to be on Beechwood Island with her Liars, but Beechwood Island is a private property intended for summer vacations. It’s a place of retreat and relaxation, not a place where the real stuff of life is made.
