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PART THREE: Summer Seventeen
Summary: Chapter 23
Cadence arrives at the island. Granddad and Granny’s old Victorian house has been replaced by an unpleasant modern dwelling. A beloved tree swing is gone. Cadence is upset, but her mother orders her to pull herself together.
Summary: Chapter 24
Bess hugs Cadence longer and harder than necessary. Bess’s family now lives at the new house. Granddad confuses Cadence with Mirren. Taft and the twins joke uneasily about Cadence’s vampire-like appearance.
Summary: Chapter 25
The reunion with the Liars goes better, but Mirren intends to stay away from Granddad’s new house and “those people,” as do Johnny and Gat. Cadence is worried that the other Liars are moving on with life after the accident without her.
Summary: Chapter 26
Cadence and Gat are finally alone together. She is still hurting from his silence during her recovery, but her old feelings for him return. Cadence reminds her mother that she got rid of all her father’s possessions when he left them.
Summary: Chapter 27
Back in her old room on the island, Cadence starts picking out books to give away, despite her mother’s objections.
Summary: Chapter 28
Cadence also resolves to fill in the gaps in what she knows about her accident.
Summary: Chapter 29
That night, a sleepless Cadence encounters Carrie, out walking. Carrie mentions that Johnny is also sometimes up at night and that Will has nightmares.
Summary: Chapter 30
The next day, Cadence learns from her Granddad that his two dogs recently died. He again confuses her with Mirren.
Summary: Chapter 31
Cadence spends some time reconnecting with the other Liars. At least some of the items she sent never reached them. Mirren tells Cadence her aunts have been discussing the migraines she’s having, and Cadence asked Mirren not to feel sorry for her.
Summary: Chapter 32
When Cadence finally confronts Gat over his silence while she was recuperating, he apologizes profusely.
Analysis
Cadence is surprised by the warm greeting she and her mother receive from Aunt Carrie. The love that the sisters lavish on one another is uncharacteristic, and Cadence finds it suspicious. This suspicion extends to the incongruities that Cadence notices, including the aunts’ concern about Harris and the renovated main house. The slow accumulation of changes demonstrate that something is different, and Cadence cannot, or refuses to, reckon with the events of previous summers and the fallout of those events. In the face of these changes, Cadence is resentful of her mother’s encouragement to act normal, to hold the stiff upper lip for which the Sinclairs are known.
It’s not just Cadence’s mother telling people how to behave. All of the Sinclairs seem to have been told and to be telling one another how to act—how to react to Grandad and his failing memory, how to react to Cadence’s amnesia, who’s telling Cadence what, to Cadence being given instructions by nearly everyone on how to interpret Taft and Bonnie’s odd statements and behaviors. The effect is stifling, and Cadence is conflicted. She wants the freedom to act like an invalid when it frees her from family responsibilities. But she doesn’t want unwelcome comments about her appearance or to be pitied, except when she decides to bring up all the reasons people should have pity on her, laying bare the contradiction at the core of Cadence’s character.
This conflict is particularly telling in her relationship with the Liars, who Cadence first sees lined up by the fence along the tiny beach, demonstrably apart from everyone and everything else. Cadence interacts with them only after she’s left the aunts and her mother behind, and together they head to Cuddledown, where they will remain for the rest of the summer. She is removing herself from the rest of her family, illustrating her maturation and her willingness to begin to heal. Cadence lingers particularly on her interactions with Gat, interactions that are private and intimate, where she can allow herself to feel all the love she has stored up for him. It’s important to Cadence that she appears normal in front of them, but she can’t stop herself from dwelling on her pain or from reminding them that she has had an accident, and that she can’t remember. The technique builds tension between Cadence and the Liars that is slow to resolve, mirroring Cadence’s healing process.
That the Liars never responded to her email and that they never received her gifts all point to the deeper truth about them that Cadence cannot yet recognize. The debates between Mirren and Johnny mirror Cadence’s inner frustration about what she can and cannot remember. She believes she is being treated too deferentially when she wishes to continue being a normal adolescent girl. The fact that she and Gat just cannot find a way to be normal together indicates that she doesn’t know where to place him in her memories.
