Summary
Cadence comments that most websites tell her selective amnesia is a consequence of traumatic brain injury: it is not uncommon for a patient to forget things. Cadence doesn’t remember her accident, and when her mother tells her, she forgets and asks again the next day what happened. Cadence’s father wants to take her to Australia for summer seventeen, but Cadence wants to go back to Beechwood and be with the Liars again.
The trip is paid for, but Mummy calls and cancels the trip. She negotiates with Cadence’s father that Cadence will spend four weeks on Beechwood and then stay with her father at his home in Colorado, where Cadence has never been. The night before she leaves for Beechwood, Cadence receives a call from Mirren’s little brother, Taft. He asks if it’s true she’s a drug addict. He says Cuddledown is haunted and asks to sleep at Windemere. Cadence says it isn’t haunted. She tells him to ask Mirren to read him a bedtime story or sing to him. He hangs up without saying goodbye.
On the island, Cadence jokes to her aunt Carrie about the vodka and Percocet she is taking. Her mother lies and says her medication is non-addictive. Cadence longs to see Gat. As they pilot the boat to the houses, Cadence sees that her grandfather’s old Victorian-style Clairmont home has been replaced with a new sleek and modern structure. Her aunt says the inside is completely bare. It seems unbearably sad to Cadence. Her mother grips her hand and tells her to be normal, and not to cause a scene. The boat turns a corner and Cadence sees the Liars waiting to greet her. They are the same as ever. However, they don’t come to the dock to help with the boat.
After Cadence chats with her younger cousins in New Clairmont, she goes off to find the Liars, who swarm her affectionately when she enters Cuddledown. They talk quickly, asking questions about her year. She notices she is as tall as Gat now. Mirren says she has a boyfriend who she has started sleeping with. Mirren also says she won’t be having breakfast or dinners in New Clairmont this year: she just wants to stay with the Liars “down here.” Johnny and Gat agree, and Cadence realizes they discussed the idea before she arrived. She goes to the water with the Liars. Gat says he worried he’d never see her again. She wonders why he didn’t reach out, why he was such an ass, but she melts in his presence when they hold hands.
Cadence misses dinner that night, claiming she has a headache when really she just can’t bring herself to go. She cannot sleep, and goes outside to find her aunt Carrie wandering around in a nightdress in the moonlight. Carrie says she can’t sleep without Ed and then asks if she’s seen Johnny. Cadence says not in the middle of the night. She asks her aunt if she wants a flashlight, but Carrie says she likes the dark. The next day, Mirren tells Cadence she received all her emails, but Cadence can’t be mad at her for not answering.
Gat finds Cadence at the shore. They walk to the perimeter together and hug. Gat asks if she remembers the time they went out on a flat rock together, but she can’t. She hates her hacked-up mind. She hates that she still wants him, after two years. But how can she forgive him when she doesn’t know what he did to her? She confronts him about never getting in touch and then suddenly telling her he worried he’d never see her again. Gat asks if they can start over, fresh. She says okay, after lunch they’ll start over. Gat then runs off.
Cadence goes to lunch at New Clairmont, which is sharp and empty of personal possessions. The halls are all glass on one side and blank on the other. Her grandfather says he started over with this house, and “that old life is gone.” Cadence asks Carrie if she got back to sleep last night, and if Johnny was up. Carrie says she doesn’t know what Cadence is talking about.
After lunch, Cadence tries to ask her little cousins what they did last summer while she was in Europe. Taft tells her he isn’t supposed to talk about her ending up in the water because it will make her headaches worse. He also says he and Liberty found pills on her dresser. She tells him to stay out of her room. He says drugs are not your friend and people should be your friends. She grows frustrated and asks again what they did last summer. The little cousins say they don’t want to talk to her anymore, then run off to play Angry Birds.
Analysis
The theme of trauma enters the story with Cadence’s brief discussion of the selective amnesia that results—as far as Cadence knows—from her brain injury. Although her mother repeatedly tells her what happened during the accident, Cadence cannot process the information by committing it to memory. Unbeknownst to Cadence—or the reader at this point—her amnesia is actually a product of the trauma she experienced as the only survivor of the fire that claimed the lives of Johnny, Mirren, and Gat.
The themes of addiction and grief arise with Taft’s strange phone call to Cadence before she comes to Beechwood for summer seventeen. With the tactlessness of a child, Taft asks if it is true that Cadence is a drug addict; the question reveals that his mother has been gossiping about Cadence’s reliance on Percocet following the fire—something she still thinks of as merely her “accident.” Taft also asks if Cuddledown is haunted, a hint that the former hangout of the Liars has taken on a supernatural aura since their deaths. But Cadence’s amnesia keeps her from understanding the significance of what he is asking, and she tells him to speak with Mirren—the older sister Cadence doesn’t know he is grieving.
Denial enters the story again when Cadence arrives on Beechwood after a year away and discovers that her grandfather has completely rebuilt Clairmont in an impersonal, barren modernist style. Cadence is unaware that this is her grandfather’s way of avoiding the grief he feels after the deaths of Gat, Johnny, Mirren, and his dogs, all of whom died in the fire that destroyed the original Clairmont. In the house’s place, he builds a monumental structure that has none of the old home’s personal touches. With the lack of photos and sentimental objects, he can avoid having painful memories triggered.
While some readers might have clued into the Liars’ deaths because of Taft’s phone call and Cadence’s inability to get in touch with any of them, Lockhart misdirects the reader by having the Liars present to greet Cadence as they would any other year. However, astute readers will note that none of the Liars come down to the dock with the rest of the family. In fact, they spend all their time close to Cuddledown, excusing their avoidance of the New Clairmont by claiming not to like the house. Because of this segregation, Cadence never sees the ghost versions of the Liars interact with the rest of their family, and the rest of the family never sees Cadence interact with the Liars.
Lockhart builds on the eerie atmosphere that has fallen over Beechwood with Cadence’s nighttime interaction with her aunt. Like a supernatural being herself, Carrie wanders around in her nightgown with no light source. She also speaks of Johnny as though he is around; however, the next morning Carrie insists she does not know what Cadence is talking about when she mentions him.
The section ends with the theme of addiction arising again. As tactless as he was during their phone call, Taft lectures Cadence about her pain medication abuse, parroting the anti-drug messaging he has learned in school. Still in the dark about why her cousins are avoiding speaking normally to her, Cadence responds with frustration to their cryptic statements about not triggering her trauma. To readers with hindsight knowledge of the story, it is clear their parents have told them not to discuss the fire with Cadence.
