41 pages • 1 hour read
Megan MirandaThe Last House Guest
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Interlude 2-Chapter 15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Interlude 2 Summary: “Summer 2017”
The narrative returns to the Plus-One Party in 2017. At 9:30 p.m., the power goes out. Ellie Arnold falls in the pool, and Parker helps her out. Avery flips the breakers and restores power to the house. Ellie’s friends help her find dry clothes, and Avery and Parker clean up the wet clothes and dirty towels that Ellie used in the bathroom. Parker asks Avery if she thinks he is a good person. Parker says a man is at the party looking for her, and when Avery leaves the bathroom, he tells her to be careful.
Chapter 11 Summary
When Parker leaves for the day, Avery uses the key from the lockbox to enter the Lomans’ house. She searches each room as thoroughly as she can, but she does not find the box of Sadie’s belongings. She races back to the guesthouse just as Parker returns home with Erica, one of the people working on Sadie’s memorial. Erica reveals she worked the same party where Avery met Sadie years ago and that Sadie had asked for Avery by name. Avery is confused and assumes Erica has misremembered.
Once Erica is gone, Parker asks Avery if she had been in the house and left the back patio door open. Avery denies being in the house and privately notes that she had not gone through the patio door. Avery wonders if someone else was in the house the same time she was and if they were looking for the same thing she was.
Chapter 12 Summary
Avery invites Parker to go out with her that night. Parker insists on driving, which she agrees to so she can search the car. A couple hours before they leave, Avery receives a call from the renter at the Sea Rose who claims someone lit the candles while she and her friends were out. As Avery looks through the rental agreements, she realizes she cannot find the paperwork for Sunset Retreat, the property across the street from the Blue Robin, where she saw a curtain move and where she realized someone was watching her.
Chapter 13 Summary
Parker takes Avery to a bar called The Fold, and Avery runs into Greg while ordering drinks. Greg calls her “Sadie’s monster,” and Avery quickly leaves him at the bar. Avery waits until Parker is distracted by three women—Ellie among them—to ask for his keys, pretending that she forgot her phone in the car. Her hunch proves correct: Sadie’s box is still in the trunk. Avery finds a tattered journal in the box, but it is not Sadie’s diary. It is Avery’s, which explains how the handwriting matched the note: they were both hers.
Chapter 14 Summary
Inside the Fold, Greg brings a round of drinks to their table. Avery does not want to drink with Greg, but Parker subtly reassures her. On their way home, they discuss Greg’s infatuation with Sadie. Outside the Loman house, Avery and Parker share a kiss, but Avery is unsettled by Parker’s hand on her neck. Inside the guesthouse, Avery discovers the power is out again. Instead of going back outside to reset the breakers, she uses her phone’s flashlight and small candles to illuminate the pages of her old journal. She rereads her old writing, recalling how close she came to killing herself after she lost her parents, her grandmother, and her friendships with Connor and Faith.
In the morning, Avery drives to the Blue Robin and runs into Detective Collins outside. He asks her to show him around the house and remarks that there were no pictures of Avery on Sadie’s phone. Collins also tells Avery that Luce said she had no idea who Avery was before arriving in Littleport that summer; he thinks it odd that Sadie never mentioned Avery, especially if the two were supposedly best friends. Collins accuses Avery of being obsessed with Sadie and wanting to take her place.
Chapter 15 Summary
Avery remembers the strained period of time when she and Sadie were fighting, and the casual cruelty with which Sadie treated her. Avery decides to check out Sunset Retreat, the house from which someone watched her the day she found Sadie’s phone. As soon as she steps inside, Avery smells gas and calls 911. When she returns to the guesthouse, Avery finds all her belongings strewn about the living room; Bianca Loman, Sadie’s mother, is standing in the middle of the mess.
Interlude 2-Chapter 15 Analysis
Parker’s question at the Plus-One Party illuminates a hidden insecurity; he asks Avery if she thinks he is a good person because something makes him doubt himself, and he wants her to reassure him. This glimpse of his uncertainty, this crack in his armor, makes Avery feel momentarily attracted to him. Sadie’s express forbiddance of a relationship between them make Avery curious about Parker, and the interplay between surface and the interior (and what might be hidden underneath) is undeniably alluring for Avery.
Erica’s revelation that Sadie specifically asked for Avery to work the party where they met strongly suggests that Sadie already knew who Avery was and that she likely engineered their “chance” encounter in the bathroom. Although it would not be surprising if Sadie knew of Avery beforehand, given the multiple tragedies that befell Avery’s family, it is curious why Sadie would seek her out, befriend her, then introduce Avery to her family and slowly integrate Avery into her world. In an uncharacteristic move, Avery chalks up Erica’s words to a simple misremembering instead of interrogating the possibility that what she said is true. This is the first time Avery overlooks the potential of a hidden truth in favor of a comfortable answer.
At the Fold, Greg’s harsh words about Sadie are understandably upsetting for Avery to hear, but they also offer a glimpse into the public’s perception of Sadie (and her bond with Avery). While Avery may privately think of rumors she heard, it is another thing entirely to have someone say it directly to her face. Here the public and private spheres collide, and Avery’s memories of her friendship with Sadie are contested by the possibility that she was not as independent in their relationship as she thought. If Sadie did “create” her, as Greg suggests, then Avery is left to wonder how much of her identity is truly her own or if she is simply the “mini-Sadie” that other people see (144).
When Avery recovers her journal from Sadie’s belongings, she is surprised to see how close she came to harming herself when she was in the hardest parts of her grief. One image her writing kept returning to was that of a blade, and Avery’s narration slides fluidly from reading her journal to remembering when she cut herself at the party, the wound that brought her and Sadie together. She recalls how she “hadn’t anticipated the amount of blood” as well as the “impulse and chaos of a single moment” in an “empty kitchen” (153). These factors taken all together—the impulse, the shock at the sight of blood, and the panic immediately after—all suggest Avery cut herself on purpose.
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By Megan Miranda
