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Summary: Chapter 33
Arriving at the new house for lunch, Cadence learns during a quick tour that Granddad’s old possessions are all gone. Carrie has no memory of talking with Cadence the night before.
Summary: Chapter 34
When Cadence tries to get Taft to fill in some details about what happened two summers ago, he instead brings up the pills the twins found while poking around Cadence’s room.
Summary: Chapter 35
Later, Mirren says that Bess feels slighted over the poor condition of Cuddledown, her house on the island where the Liars have been hanging out. When Johnny expresses surprise that Cadence is unaware of this situation, Mirren chides him for forgetting that Cadence doesn’t remember much of summer fifteen.
Summary: Chapter 36
Cadence tells the Liars how sick she felt while in Europe.
Summary: Chapter 37
Later, Cadence recalls a family conversation, just before her accident, that turned unpleasant when Granddad talked of selling the big house back in Boston. Cadence wonders why her mother and aunts are kinder to each other now.
Summary: Chapter 38
The Liars talk about personal mottos. Mirren emphasizes kindness, while Gat emphasizes the need to fight evil. Cadence writes her motto on the back of her hands: “Always do what you are afraid to do.”
Summary: Chapter 39
When Gat and Cadence are alone and begin to kiss, he pulls back, saying there’s much about him she doesn’t understand, including his experience as a person of South Asian descent, living among white people.
Summary: Chapter 40
Cadence narrates yet another story of a king with three daughters. The youngest gave birth to a little girl of her own, tiny enough to fall in love with a handsome, clever mouse. When their love scandalized the kingdom, the tiny girl and the mouse escaped together to a foreign land.
Summary: Chapter 41
Granddad takes Cadence on a day trip to a nearby town, where they run into his estate lawyer. Granddad proudly introduces Cadence as the first grandchild.
Summary: Chapter 42
Cadence later recalls a conversation between her and Granddad over some statues, including statues made of ivory, that he had bought for Granny. Granddad had become irritated when Cadence remarked that ivory was illegal. She should not tell him what to do with his money, he had said.
Summary: Chapter 43
Cadence worries that the other Liars aren’t being careful enough to avoid sunburn. She continues trying to fill the gaps in her memory.
Summary: Chapter 44
Cadence and Mirren sneak away on a boat outing. Mirren claims not to know why Gat was out of touch for so long, and the conversation ends when Mirren begins to feel sick.
Summary: Chapter 45
The Liars discover that one can picnic on Cuddledown’s roof.
Summary: Chapter 46
As the days pass, the atmosphere at Cuddledown grows less enjoyable. Mirren constantly feels unwell, and Johnny wastes time with silly games. Gat spends all his time reading and has withdrawn from Cadence. Dirty dishes and even broken bottles begin to pile up.
Summary: Chapter 47
Cadence finds Johnny playing with Legos. She presses him about why he didn’t respond to her emails after the accident. He blames it on his being a jerk but won’t answer her questions about Gat, beyond saying that Gat treated the other girlfriend badly and was angry with himself over many things.
Summary: Chapter 48
Cadence leaves one of her giveaway books in Gat’s room in Cuddledown. The room, formerly Taft’s, is a filthy mess.
Analysis
Like the verse portions at the start of the novel, Chapters 34 and 35 and other interactions among the family can be held up to compare the repetitions and variations. In Chapter 34, Cadence might believe she’s being discreet as she tries to get information from the littles about the summer she went to Europe. But the conversation reveals more about her than the summer or the Liars. The littles know that she is taking painkillers, and it is implied that Liberty and Bonnie might be stealing Cadence’s drugs and trying them. In Chapter 35, the Liars aren’t behaving all that different from the littles. The primary difference is that Cadence believes she’s in charge of the littles, while the Liars undercut her sense of superiority by talking about her loss of memory, contributing to her feeling sorry for herself.
Cadence’s desire for independence and health and her lingering pain and memory loss come to a head in her conversations with Gat and the Liars. They want the experience of independence and the freedom of youthful idleness and languor. Cadence wants them to understand her pain. The distinction is key to Cadence’s ultimate recovery because she is still capable of experiences beyond pain, but she is not yet able to accept this fact. Cadence’s rejection of her mother’s encouragement to play tennis again exemplifies this distinction. The distinction is furthered in Cadence’s reaction to Harris’s newly remodeled home, whose emptiness she cannot comprehend. She tries to argue that his behavior is comparable to Penny’s and to Cadence’s, insofar as all three of them have stripped their lives of the possessions that remind them of their losses.
A similar pattern of repetition and variation can be seen in Cadence’s experiences of the present and her memories of summer fifteen. Then, she and Gat were hiding their relationship. Now, they’re trying to rediscover it. Now, the aunts are hugging and finding solutions to Harris’s problems. Then, they were arguing at Harris’s taunting. It takes the outsider Gat to open Cadence’s eyes to the underlying difference. She has never been able to see beyond Beechwood Island. She knows next to nothing about Gat’s life in New York City, nor does she understand her aunts’ experiences as daughters, wives, or mothers. She doesn’t understand the lessons literature such as Wuthering Heights or King Lear could impart. And she doesn’t understand what the entire family has had to endure since her accident. Eventually, the Liars begin to distance themselves from Cadence, immersing themselves in trivial side pursuits at Cuddledown and retreating from her probing conversations that are ultimately self-serving.
In Chapter 38, the Liars share their mottos. Each of their mottos echoes an essential characteristic. Johnny’s is a joke. Mirren’s is kind and optimistic. Gat’s is transformative without being militant. Cadence’s “always do what you are afraid to do” is a blatant contradiction of her entire self, and thus encompasses the dichotomy at her core. She’s trying to remember while at the same time being terrified of whatever it is and is therefore reluctant to remember. She is utterly unable to let Gat go, so she simply doesn’t. And she’s making no effort to cure her own pain or heal from her accident.
Cadence’s fairytale in Chapter 40 is markedly different from the ones she has told elsewhere. Here, the king and the daughters are all happy. It’s the oldest granddaughter who suffers. This is an expansion of a fairytale she told earlier, suggesting that Cadence is still adding to her own understanding of her story. Still, she takes it only so far as to focus on the ways in which the princess is different from her family, the tiny beast she finds to fall in love with, and their eventual escape. She sees the granddaughter’s abandonment of her family as heroic rather than tragic. Cadence still has some distance to go before she can read her story in way that focuses on reconciliation and acceptance rather than tragedy and loss.
In Chapter 42, Cadence and Harris, in a memory from summer fifteen discuss his many possessions, particularly his ivory statues. By this time, Gat has enlightened Cadence sufficiently for her to realize that ivory is not merely a precious commodity. It is the product of the illegal poaching of rare and endangered animals such as elephants and rhinoceroses. These animals are supposed to be legally protected, but in many parts of the world those protections fail for a variety of reasons, the primary one being wealthy people who can afford to skirt the law. Cadence was accustomed to seeing Harris as someone who refuses to take no for an answer, a quality she believed was heroic. Now, she understands it might be problematic.
