Family of Liars

When Carrie finally sees Pfeff’s body lying on the dock, she notices that his shirt is off and pants and underwear halfway down his hips. She checks for a pulse but finds none, and Penny runs off to scrub her face in the water as if to try to unsee what has just happened. Bess appears on the dock, saying she was going to follow Penny and Pfeff, and only then does Carrie drop the board. Penny returns to the dock exclaiming that Carrie saved her from Pfeff and recounting what almost happened to her.

While Penny recounts the assault, all Carrie can wonder is whether she tried to kill her sister or Pfeff or if she even knew what she was doing. She decides that she does not know right now but is certain she was not trying to save Penny through her actions. Penny hugs Carrie, apologizing profusely and thanking her for saving her.

Carrie admits that the rest of the story from this point onward—the boat ride and throwing Pfeff overboard—happened as she told it originally. Carrie recalls her surprise at her sisters’ loyalty and the fact that they banded together with her even though Carrie knows that “I was only half theirs, only half a Sinclair” (269). Her sisters willingly go along with Carrie’s plan, and in the morning, they return home and lie.

Two weeks after Pfeff’s death, Harris and Tipper plan their annual Bonfire Night, when everyone goes down to Big Beach to burn old magazines and newspapers. On the bonfire day, Carrie finds an old journal of hers and writes in it: “I, Caroline Lennox Taft Sinclair, killed Lawrence Pfefferman. I killed Lawrence Pfefferman. I killed Lawrence Pfefferman” (270). She burns the notebook in the fire.

From the future, Carrie states that she does not know whether Pfeff would have ever learned right from wrong had he lived longer. She settles on the belief that he did not deserve to die and that while he did terrible things to others, she also proved herself capable of doing terrible things.

The police visit the island again and inform the Sinclairs that Pfeff is Presumed Dead. When the officers leave, Harris asks Carrie to see him in his private study. Inside Harris’s office, he tells her that he ran out of sleeping pills a few weeks earlier. Worried that this is an accusation, Carrie keeps a straight face until her father continues. He tells Carrie that he had a few nights of difficult sleep as a result. One night he finds himself awake at 2:00 a.m. and goes downstairs.

On his way downstairs, he sees that none of his daughters are in their beds. He walks out into the yard, and out in the distance, on the water, he sees his three daughters rowing the motorboat out to sea. Harris goes inside, grabs a flashlight, and returns to the dock. Once on the dock, the overwhelming smell of bleach hits Harris’s nose. As he walks, he notices the warped board. He then tells her that he shines the flashlight on the board and notices that the nails are sticky. 

Harris confirms that he took the board. He says that although he did not fully understand what his daughters had done, “I sure as sure was going to protect them, no matter what was going on” (275). Upon hearing this, Carrie realizes that her father’s actions mean that he loves her, despite her not being of his blood.

Harris concludes his story by saying that he figured out what they had done between his discoveries that night and the girls’ performance the next morning. He asks Carrie if she has anything to add to the story, and she says no. Harris accepts this and tells her that he burned the wooden board during Bonfire Night, erasing the murder weapon and the sole evidence that could destroy Carrie’s story.

Before dismissing Carrie to go help her mother prepare dinner, Harris says he decided to tell her what he had done for her so that “you can stop mooning about Buddy Kopelnick, stop messing around with my sleeping pills, and be the Sinclair I have always considered you to be” (276). With this, Harris puts to bed Carrie’s anxieties about her place in her family and whether her father loves her.

That evening is the Midsummer Ice Cream party with another family from off-island. As Carrie eats ice cream and watches her family enjoy the evening, she thinks that despite its challenges, “I want to be in this family” (279) and that she will not leave it even though she wants a different life. 

Rosemary continues to visit Carrie for the next few summers as Carrie goes to college and drops out in her second year to attend a rehabilitation center. She returns to the island and relapses quickly. Rosemary also visits the next summer when Carrie is 21 and spends June and July in rehab again. Carrie arrives on the island in August after deciding to quit college and move to the city with a friend, determined to remain sober.

Carrie sees Rosemary only once that summer, noticing that Rosemary appears wan and tired. Rosemary tells Carrie that she takes too many pills and reveals her true reason for returning, summer after summer: “I can’t make you better, but I keep coming because I’m worried” (285). Rosemary also tells Carrie that she was once worried that Carrie would die by suicide but that “you did him instead” (286), revealing that she knows about Pfeff’s murder.

Carrie cries, learning that Rosemary loves her anyway, even knowing this horrible thing. This revelation makes Carrie realize that she has a future beyond her faults and that while she will never fully escape her past, she will be able to move on with her life. She tells Rosemary to stop worrying about her and that while she has been and is sick, she is working her way out of it burying her: “I’m going to live with the sadness and shame, and actually feel them or whatever [...]. I’m going to just go on, one day and then another day” (290). As she tells Rosemary this, Carrie understands that despite the things she has done, which she cannot change, “I can see that I have a future. And maybe that is enough’’ (291). Rosemary seems satisfied and tells Carrie that she can now leave for good. She hugs Carrie and takes her hand, leading her upstairs to the attic.

Rosemary looks through the boxes of her things and then walks to the window. Carrie asks her not to go, but Rosemary states that she has to. Rosemary tells Carrie that she loves her and tells her to “be good” (293). Rosemary then jumps out of the window and disappears. Carrie resolves to keep her promises to her sister.

In the present, Carrie and Johnny sit together, and Carrie can see that Johnny appears tired, almost in pain. He thanks her for telling him this story even though it was “a lot” (294) for him. He tells her he needs some time to think, but he will visit her again tomorrow.

Carrie repeats the refrain that “I am Cinderella’s stepsister. I am the ghost whose crime went unpunished. I am Mr. Fox. I am white cotton and sandy feet, old money and lilacs, yes–and yet my insides are made of sea water, warped wood, and rusty nails” (295). She briefly repeats all that she has revealed through telling her story and states that now she has told her story, she may be able to tell a new story about herself.

In this new story, Carrie casts herself as a girl whose father protects her “even though she was not his own” (295). She is a girl who overcame an addiction to narcotics. She is a divorced woman who finds love again with a new man even though he does not know everything about her. She is a woman who lost her eldest son but whose ghost returned to her and forgave her. She is all of these things, and she has begun to heal, deciding to move forward, living a “joyful but conscious” (296) life.

In the morning she calls her sisters, their children, her remaining son, her father, and her new partner to her house. They come, and they all sit together and share a quiet breakfast. Carrie sits on the porch with her sisters, sipping cups of tea together. Carrie knows that it will not always be this way.