Seven Days in June

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Parts 6-7

Part 8-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “Wednesday”

Part 4, Chapter 13 Summary: “Pretty Sentimental”

Eva arrives at a townhouse—the address Shane texted her, begging her to come. He asks her in, but she declines and asks him for a favor. He agrees to teach at her daughter’s school before she can even get the whole question out. Shane suggests that they start over and be friends, and he asks about her plans for the day. Looking overwhelmed, she says her life is falling apart but declines to talk about it. He convinces her to play hooky, and they walk down the street to a mini-amphitheater and sit down.

Eva asks about the house that Shane is staying in; it’s James Baldwin’s house, where he wrote Another Country. Eva points out that it is the book that Shane was reading when they met as teenagers, and he smiles. Eva accuses him of being sentimental, but Shane retorts that she remembered as well, so they both are. He booked the house hoping for inspiration and tells Eva about how hard it has been to write since he got sober. Shane asks Eva how she stopped cutting, and she explains that she went to a psychiatric center for self-harm after they saw each other last. Though Shane is sober and Eva has stopped the self-harm, they both admit to each other that they miss their old coping mechanisms. They now have no “vices,” no way to dull out the pain of life. Shane notices that Eva is wearing her cameo ring, and she tells him it makes her feel safe.

They go to find other vices together, which leads them to an artisanal gelato stand. It’s like no time has passed between them and they’re picking up right where they left off 15 years ago. Shane asks why she said her life is falling apart, and Eva explains Audre’s suspension. When Shane asks about Eva’s mother, she says that her mother was never meant to be a mother, and she explains Lizette’s revolving door of apartments and men. Moreover, all the women in Eva’s family—her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother—have tragic and messy histories. Her grandmother Clotilde had fainting spells, “the blues,” and violent headaches. The story goes that she killed her husband one day while she was having a month-long headache; her husband was singing, and she couldn’t bear the noise anymore. The sheriff was too scared of her to prosecute, so they ran her out of town, leaving Lizette with an aunt. Clotilde then became an entrepreneur cashing in on her reputation as a witch, selling her spices that she marketed as being so hot the devil himself kissed them. Clotilde’s mother, Eva’s great grandmother, was named Delphine. She ran off to New Orleans and passed as a Sicilian, marrying a white man. After Delphine’s husband died, she inherited his wealth and mansion. She was a secretly Black woman in the wealthy and racist Garden District. Terrified of being found out, she eventually couldn’t take it anymore, and she drowned herself in the tub, with the phrase “Passant blanc” written on the tiles in lipstick.

Shane begs Eva to write this story as a book. She explains she needs to write the 15th volume of Cursed before anything new, since Cursed is how she supports Audre. Eva is also hesitant to publish her family’s grim history because she has worked hard to hide this generational trauma from Audre; she wants Audre to be proud of who she is.

Then, they are interrupted by Charlii, the door girl for The Dream House art installation across the street. She wants them to visit the installation, explaining that it’s full of dreamy sounds and lights and is interactive: You visit, meditate, sleep, and then go back into the world. Shane and Eva decide to enter, but not before Charlii, who is secretly a Cursed fan, takes and uploads a picture of Shane and Eva onto the series’ Facebook group.

Part 4, Chapter 14 Summary: “Girling About”

In detention, Audre is stewing about her fight with her mother. She is frustrated that she can help everyone else besides her mother. She idolized her and sometimes would wear her cameo ring when her mother was too busy to notice, so she could have a little “Mommy Magic” (155). For as long as she can remember, it has just been the two of them, and even with her headaches, her mother is always there for her, even if it’s just a cuddle at the end of the long day, the smell of lavender and peppermint comforting to Audre. But here, at Cheshire Prep, she is too stifled, and she wants to be a free woman like Lizette or Cece. She wishes that she knew Grandma Lizette better, but they haven’t seen her for a while. As Audre spirals in her thoughts, the supervising TA, Mr. Josh, asks Audre if her mother knows Shane Hall. Audre knows who that is but doesn’t know her mother knows him, but Mr. Josh shows her the photo of her mother snuggled up with him on the amphitheater steps. Confused, Audre bursts into tears.

Part 4, Chapter 15 Summary: “Dream House”

As an assumed couple, Eva and Shane are given a private room in the art installation. The rules are explained: no touching, no sex, and the doors don’t have locks. Still, they feel like they are in their own world in their room. After Shane shows Eva a scar on his stomach from coral when he learned to surf in Morocco, they can’t keep their hands off each other. In between kisses, they play Twenty Questions. Shane asks why she came to visit him at his townhouse, and she admits it wasn’t to ask a favor but to see him. Shane admits that he never learned how to stop thinking about Eva, and Eva concedes that she didn’t romanticize them and that they were real. Both dive into each other, waiting 15 years for this moment. When they are done, Eva leaves again.

Part 4, Chapter 16 Summary: “No Safe Thrill”

Even though Eva has tried to forget their vice-filled, intense, and passionate week together, she can’t ignore it all.

The narrative stays in the present, but it describes Eva’s memory of the week she spent with Shane 15 years ago: They were usually drunk or high, trying to “outrun pain.” Shane was trying to outrun the death of his foster mother, the abandonment by his foster father after her death, and the horrible foster homes after that. Eva asked him what he likes to do besides fight, and Shane answered he likes to write. Then, Eva offered him this mantra: “Don’t fight. Write” (175). For Eva, she was trying to outrun her physical pain and her mother’s boyfriends. Shane asked if they ever hurt her, and Eva explained she could handle herself, though she alluded to some of their violent behavior. Shane asked where her mom’s current boyfriend worked—one who’d recently tried to assault Eva—and after Eva gave him the address, Shane disappeared. He came back late, drenched from the rain with a newly broken cast and a cut on his face, explaining that this boyfriend wouldn’t bother her anymore. Her fear evaporated.

However, Eva soon became overwhelmed by her dependency on Shane and knew that she would not be able to handle it if he left. Everything else was already falling apart: her relationship with her mother, her offer from Princeton. Now, Eva remembers being extremely intoxicated by a substance she couldn’t even identify; Shane then found her leaning too far over the stair banister, and he pulled her back, begging her to live, even if it was just for him. That night, they carved their initials into each other and slept together for the first time. They were both under the influence of unnamed substances, “wasted.”

And lastly, Eva remembers waking up confused. She felt a tight embrace and smelled White Diamonds—her mother’s perfume. She remembers asking for Shane and hearing her mother answer, telling her he was already gone and that Mercier women are cursed—“If I can’t make them stay, you can’t” (179). She heard a voice somewhere saying that she’d overdosed.

Part 4 Analysis

Finally, alone, Shane and Eva can be vulnerable with each other—and, slowly, they fall back into each other. The juxtaposition of the chapters helps explain the past, their conflict as adults, and what they must face being together. In the present, the reader sees them reconcile and eventually have sex. Eva shares that she is scared she romanticized them and that they weren’t real, but she now confesses she didn’t romanticize anything. Finally, together physically, they are again vulnerable with one another, building from the foundation established in previous flashback chapters.

Chapter 16 is the first chapter to revisit the past through a present character’s memory instead of through a direct flashback. The memory is of Eva’s time with Shane in the mansion, and its structure is more fragmented and episodic than other flashback chapters; paragraphs irregularly shift between scenes, and each new memory is prefaced with the words “She remembered.” These memories still don’t allow the reader to see everything, and the narration only shows as much as Eva personally knew at the time. She woke up to her mother yelling and Shane missing. The chapters in Part 4 do not offer teenage Shane’s perspective; the reader therefore has no insight into why he disappears (in Eva’s memory in Chapter 16). This better allows readers to empathize with the young Eva, who is also bewildered by his departure.