41 pages • 1 hour read
Megan MirandaA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
At the Plus-One Party in 2017, Connor catches up to Avery. Although she initially refuses to speak with him, she eventually apologizes for how they broke up. Still, Avery cannot help but wonder if Connor’s relationship with Sadie was meant to hurt her personally. Luce emerges from the loft’s bedroom highly upset. Avery assumes she saw her and Parker in the bathroom earlier and begins to explain, but Luce cuts her off, saying, “I have never seen so many liars in one place” (173).
Bianca kicks Avery out of the guesthouse. Avery remembers their confrontation at Sadie’s funeral; they fought over Avery’s involvement in some missing funds, and Bianca accused Avery of letting Sadie take the blame. The missing money also fractured their friendship, and Sadie ignored Avery for nearly a full month. Avery recalls they had only been reconciled for approximately two weeks before Sadie’s death. In the present, Avery temporarily moves into the Sea Rose.
That afternoon, Avery goes to the docks to speak with Connor. The two go out on his boat to avoid Detective Collins. Avery learns that Sadie had asked Connor for a private tour, and they went out to the Horseshoe, a sheltered island with a hidden cove. Connor insists this was the extent of their interactions, and he maintains there was no secret relationship. Avery asks Connor to take her to the Horseshoe. Inside the cove, Avery finds a wooden box containing a flash drive, which Sadie presumably stashed there the previous summer.
Connor stops the boat so he can level with Avery about their past. They used to park the boat behind the rocks and watch the vacationers through their open windows, and Connor implies Avery deliberately “wormed” her way into Sadie’s life so she could become like the people they used to spy on (204). As they work through their issues, they notice someone watching them from the bluffs.
Back ashore, Avery listens to a voicemail from Detective Collins. She walks up to the Sea Rose and hears footsteps in the alley; it turns out to be Erica and a man Avery does not recognize taking a shortcut home from a bar. Inside, Avery plugs the flash drive into her laptop. The only file it contains appears to be a bank document showing payments of $100,000 and account information with no names or dates. Connor calls while Avery looks over the file; he suggests she drop her investigation.
In the morning, Grant Loman calls Avery, and they discuss the break-ins at the rental properties. Grant fires Avery over the phone. On a hunch, Avery looks up her grandmother’s bank account and routing numbers, and they match one of the payments on the flash drive. Avery concludes that this payment was why Sadie sought her out—she suspected Avery was a Loman.
Avery’s fight with Bianca shows a new dimension of her grief, namely a newfound strength and a capacity to stand up for herself. Their fight, and Avery’s lashing out, signals a significant shift in Avery’s growth. Before, with her parents and grandmother, her grief pulled her so close to rock bottom that she was unsure if she would ever climb back out. But here, grieving Sadie, Avery becomes sharper, “letting something free” (183), and gives herself permission to push back when she feels threatened or accused. She will not allow Bianca to blame her, nor will she blame herself. This behavioral shift is not without a destructive quality; instead of attacking herself, Avery attacks her second family and loses them in the process.
In the Sea Rose, Avery looks through the photos she copied from Sadie’s phone. These images offer an incomplete, approximate context to Sadie’s life; just because there is a photograph in which Sadie and her father appear happy does not mean they are still happy. Some photos are of landscapes and views, capturing Sadie’s fascination with Littleport and its natural beauty. The photos of people, however, are candid moments of genuine joy. These photos on her phone are a collection of what made Sadie happiest, fond memories she wished to keep close.
Avery’s infinity tattoo matches Sadie’s in its location, but Avery’s infinity symbol is incomplete; the loops do not fully connect back to the other lines, so it appears broken and looks more like an “S” than a true infinity symbol. To Avery, it represents the reality that life does not last forever as well as her feelings of being incomplete. To Connor, however, it looks like Sadie branded Avery with her own initial, marking Avery as hers, or as a version of her. The information on the flash drive fuels Avery’s suspicion that Sadie did not find her by accident. If the Lomans took her in, gave her a home, an education, a career, and a family, they did so either out of pity for her situation or out of guilt for somehow contributing to it.
By Megan Miranda