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PART FOUR: Look, a Fire
Summary: Chapter 58
Cadence wakes early on the first day of her last week on the island. She now remembers that the four Liars deliberately set fire to Granddad’s old house, while the adults and younger cousins were on an outing off of the island. The fire consumed the house and everything in it.
Chapters 59–60
Confronting Johnny, she learns that in summer fifteen, the aunts had begun quarreling openly over their shares of Granddad’s estate, including his island house and its contents.
Chapter 61
Granddad had egged the aunts on by talking half-seriously of leaving a large share of the estate to Harvard University.
Chapters 62–63
At Penny’s insistence, Cadence had lobbied Granddad to let Penny keep the house she and Cadence were living in. Granddad had responded by promising the house to Cadence, but she had then learned from Mirren that Granddad had also promised the house to her and Bess.
Chapter 64
During a nighttime walk a couple of days later, Gat had explained to Cadence the meaning of Granddad’s warning to Gat during the attic visit. Granddad was a racist, Gat had said. Carrie had refused a marriage proposal from Ed because she knew Granddad would disinherit her if she accepted.
Chapter 65
Cadence recounts a story of a merchant with three daughters. He steals a rose from a garden, as a gift for his eldest, but when the garden’s owner catches him, the merchant is forced to give up his eldest daughter as punishment. The owner looks like a beast but is in reality a cultured and sensitive man. The merchant never sees past the fearsome appearance.
Analysis
Cadence remembers that she and the Liars set a fire. The use of short lines and line breaks illustrates the fractured nature of her memory, and its slow recovery. The memory takes her back to the base of Beechwood Island, where she had her accident, and where she went after jumping off the rock outcropping. This time, she symbolically comes up out of the water with the memory intact, demonstrating her recovery. In the first flush of her memory, she believes that what she and the Liars did was heroic. She thinks of Clairmont as a symbol and believes the Liars conquered their fear. Emboldened by this partial memory, she returns to Cuddledown to gloat with the Liars over their accomplishment, but their reaction suggests that the memory is still incomplete and that, even now, Cadence can’t quite grasp the truth.
Once again, the question arises over who the “liars” in the title of the story are. Summer fifteen was overshadowed by Gran’s death, with the aunts going above and beyond to please Harris. Ostensibly, it seems that they were helping to compensate for his loss, but their ulterior motive is fairly evident. Their blatant, drunken arguments over jewelry, clothes, and other possessions dominate the evening meals. Their obsequiousness is a race to see who can flatter their father the most, since they’ve been able to survive financially through his charity. Are the daughters lying about wanting to help and care for their father? Is he lying about his interest in them and their families? Perhaps, and probably, the answer is yes and no. Cadence and the Liars are not the only group on the island for whom the name is fitting. No one, aside from Harris, is financially solvent. They are all dependent upon his money, and his disapproval carries serious consequences. This dependence culminates in Penny’s threat to separate Cadence from Gat if Cadence will not advocate for Penny’s inheritance of the largest house on the island. Penny likely doesn’t understand the depth of Cadence’s obsession over possessing the love she desires, so when she threatens Cadence with the loss of Gat, Penny sets in motion an angry plot she could not have envisioned.
This tension is further fueled by Gat’s conversation with Cadence on the tennis court. Cadence has, or should have had, hints that Gat and Ed were not well received by the Sinclairs because of their Indian descent. Still, she seems surprised by the depth of Harris’s prejudice. Gat lays out for her how Harris makes Gat feel small and unimportant, and he forces her to see that Harris was threatening Gat when Harris caught them kissing in the attic. He further reveals that Harris has implicitly threatened to disinherit Carrie if she marries Ed, Gat’s uncle, the man with whom she has had a long-term relationship since her husband left. The two of them might be in love, but Harris will never allow him to be a Sinclair. This revelation extends to Cadence and Gat, as well, even if Cadence has never had the awareness to process the truth of it.
