41 pages • 1 hour read
The Last House Guest
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Interlude 4-Chapter 25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Interlude 4 Summary: “Summer 2017”
Parker looks for Luce after their argument. Avery stops Connor from leaving the party, and the two have sex in one of the Blue Robin’s bedrooms. Afterward, Avery returns to the party, lost in thought about what she might say to Sadie if she finds out what Avery and Connor just did. Avery loses sight of Connor in the crowd but catches Parker’s eye—the police have just arrived.
Chapter 21 Summary
Avery remembers when she and Sadie did genealogy tests. The results revealed that Avery does have unknown biological relations out in the world, but she has no blood relation to the Lomans, which disappointed Sadie. In the present, Avery ducks into a coffee shop to avoid Detective Collins. Inside, she has a brief conversation with Ellie and Greg, and their reminiscences of last year’s Plus-One Party prompt Avery to wonder whether the supposedly accidental power outage was actually done on purpose so someone could leave the party unnoticed.
Chapter 22 Summary
Avery recalls that she always felt like she was enough for Sadie until the previous summer when Luce came to Littleport with them. Avery thought Luce felt threatened by her, or at the very least she was determined to one-up Avery in the Loman family. In the present, Avery looks up the hospital where Luce works as an occupational therapist. She leaves town to find her.
Chapter 23 Summary
Avery finds Luce at the hospital, and they work through the details of the night Sadie died. Among other things, Luce says that the window was broken when a girl swung one of the stone pillars on the patio at Parker. When Luce asked him about it, he said that he and the girl used to be involved, but he broke up with her and she would not let it go. Luce did not believe him; she thought everyone in their circle knew about his cheating. From what Luce says about the girl, Avery determines it was Faith. She then realizes that Connor knew it was Faith and that he lied about it.
Chapter 24 Summary
Connor calls Avery as she drives home. He confesses that he knew Faith was at the party, but he does not believe she actually meant to hurt Parker. As Avery pulls off the highway, she takes a turn too fast and nearly swerves off the road. In town, she quickly locates Faith and follows her down the path to the Blue Robin. Avery loses sight of her in the woods but then sees Faith enter Sunset Retreat using a key.
Chapter 25 Summary
Avery runs inside Sunset Retreat and finds Faith lighting a candle; Avery worries it might ignite any remaining gas from the leak a couple of days prior. Faith reveals she made copies of the keys left in the mailboxes by renters when they check out of a property. Faith is responsible for the break-ins, determined to spook the guests and undermine the Lomans’ monopoly so her family’s bed and breakfast can finally get out of debt. Before heading home, Faith tells Avery that she saw two people walking from the bed and breakfast to the Plus-One Party; one was a woman wearing a blue skirt who Avery thinks must have been Sadie.
Interlude 4-Chapter 25 Analysis
Avery’s decision to sleep with Connor seems like revenge, but it also is a power trip. When she initiates their encounter, Avery revels in the power she has over him; she enjoys the knowledge that she can take someone from Sadie in the same way she thinks Sadie took Connor from her. In the present, the narration focuses with increasing intensity on Avery’s recollections of her relationship with Sadie and how disillusioned she feels by her discoveries.
Avery’s family was in a financially precarious spot, a sure sign the payments from the Lomans were not intended for them. The DNA tests the girls take do, however, open up a world of possibilities, including a biological family Avery never knew about. Although these relatives are direct blood relations, they are not family to Avery in the way that Sadie is; these new relations share no tight bond with her, bear no responsibility to her, and, as far as she knows, have no love for her. This does not mean Avery is not excited by the prospective family members out there in the world, but she is happy with the family she has found with the Lomans, and she feels Sadie is enough for her, just like she thinks she is enough for Sadie—until Luce arrives.
In the coffee shop, Avery realizes that the visitors who treat her with familiarity only keep her close because of the potential for a story, a scandal, or a rumor. In Littleport, the locals and the visitors all create stories about themselves and each other to make sense of what happens in the world and their roles within it. Avery is typecast as the outsider turned insider, a social climber who betrays the people who helped her up the ladder, while Sadie becomes a kind of martyr, a tragic figure whose death is attributed to the restrictions her status placed upon her. In reality, Avery did want to be part of the Loman family, but the only person she put at risk when she brought to Grant’s attention the missing funds was herself. Likewise, Sadie did feel constrained by her status, but she merely wanted the freedom of a life of her own, not death.
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