46 pages • 1-hour read
Maine Characters
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Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, emotional abuse, and cursing.
Chapter 16 Summary
Patrick texts Lucy to ask if she wants to come to dinner. She hopes that he wants to get back together but tries to control her emotions. When they meet, Patrick admits that he misses her and says that he made a mistake. He admits that he took their life for granted, and Lucy says she misses him too. They hug, kiss, and have sex, after which they agree that Lucy should finish the summer with Vivian at the cabin.
Vivian invites Caleb over for dinner, flipping her phone face down so that he won’t see what she is working on for Dawn. They take the boat out, and Caleb tells Vivian that he bought a ticket to Thailand; he leaves next month. Her heart sinks when he says that he’ll probably be gone for three months. She considers moving to Portland for a fresh start. They kiss, and Vivian feels confident that their time is coming.
Lucy gets an interview in Portland, and afterward, she drives right to the house that she shared with Patrick and tells him that she got the job. He is surprised that she wants to move and states that his work is here. She sees the dirty dishes in the sink and the clutter in the house and realizes that Patrick doesn’t really care about her. Lucy says that if he won’t consider her wants, then she doesn’t want him back.
Chapter 17 Summary
The next morning, Lucy goes to the beach to read Celeste’s book The Mistress in the Mountains. She decides to reach out to Harrison, and they plan a date at the blueberry farm later in the week. She confesses that she briefly got back together with Patrick but that her marriage is now truly over. She also tells Harrison about her new job, and he is very happy for her. Lucy realizes that she now feels that she can handle anything. They kiss and go to Harrison’s house to make a pie; they then have sex.
Lucy and Vivian take the boat out. Vivian wonders if she was too hard on Hank, and Lucy says that she had reason to be. They recognize that because Hank was hurt after his parents’ deaths, he acted selfishly and was only human. Vivian says that Celeste often puts people into her stories—usually ones whom she doesn’t like. When Lucy asks about it, Vivian says that no one ever recognizes themselves. That night, Lucy realizes that she wouldn’t mind having the money from selling the house.
Chapter 18 Summary
Vivian picks Celeste up at the airport. Celeste has been grieving Hank, and Vivian mentions her idea of moving to Portland. She doesn’t want to keep secrets from her mother any longer, so she confesses that she had been seeing Oscar, her boss, for two years. Vivian expects judgment, but Celeste is compassionate. Celeste confesses that she always felt a distance between herself and Hank, and Vivian realizes how lonely Celeste was.
Lucy goes to dinner at Dawn’s so that Celeste and Vivian can relax together. Lucy tells Dawn about Harrison, and Dawn tells Lucy that she has met someone too. She asked Vivian to help her set up with an online dating profile, and she has been on a few dates.
The next day, Celeste and Dawn meet. Lucy and Vivian tell them that they plan to put the house on the market. Vivian says that she’s splitting the money with Lucy, and Lucy says that they’re both moving to Portland. Dawn is proud of Lucy for landing another job, and Celeste is proud of Vivian for chasing her dream. When Lucy gets Celeste alone, Lucy confronts her about a scene in one of her books, and Celeste asks if Lucy has said anything to Vivian about this matter. Lucy has not, but she tells Celeste to come clean to Vivian and Dawn, or else Lucy will.
Chapter 19 Summary
Celeste goes inside and confesses that she found a letter from Dawn to Hank right before Celeste and Hank’s wedding. She read the letter and then hid it from him. Vivian is horrified to realize that Celeste’s choice doomed Hank and Dawn—as well as Vivian and Lucy—to a lifetime of unhappiness. Furious, Vivian texts Lucy, telling her to come upstairs. Lucy says that people do stupid things when they’re in love, and Vivian realizes that she has spent a long time being angry. She decides to accept that Celeste made a bad decision at age 24. Vivian tells Celeste that what she did was awful, and Celeste ashamedly agrees. Vivian wants to make a fresh start with her mother. Vivian and Lucy watch as Celeste tells Dawn about hiding the letter and sincerely apologizes. When Dawn tells Celeste about the box of Hank’s letters, Dawn’s tone is regretful, not angry.
Chapter 20 Summary
That evening, the women go to the waterfront with the urn of Hank’s ashes. Dawn helps Celeste onto the boat, and the women all go out into the lake, toast to Hank, and read a poem. Lucy asks Celeste to read a part of one of her books. Dawn reads a diary entry from 1989, in which she talks about realizing that she loves Hank. Vivian says that Hank could be an “asshole,” but she forgives him. They all do. They bid him goodbye and scatter his ashes into the water.
Vivian grills burgers and hot dogs. Celeste mentions her upcoming book signings and says that she’d like to write a new one inspired by their story. Lucy is thrilled, and Vivian thinks that it will be nice to have everything out in the open. When Celeste checks her email, she finds a message from her lawyer; Hank has left trust funds for Vivian, Lucy, and Dawn. Each of them will receive about as much as the house itself is worth. Vivian takes Celeste to the airport, and she knows that their relationship has changed. Lucy is preparing for her move to Portland, and Vivian has secured a lease for her business. They’ve decided to keep the cabin. Together, they watch a family of four grown loons swim by.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
As Vivian and Lucy struggle to come to terms with Hank’s choices and his failure to do right by them while he was alive, these final chapters fully demonstrate The Ambiguous Nature of Morality. As Vivian tells Lucy, “He was alone after losing his parents. After going through something like that, why would he risk coming clean and pushing me and my mom away? He couldn’t, especially not since he’d ruined everything with your mom, too. He was a liar […] [b]ut maybe he was also just hurt” (339). With this conversation, they agree that although Hank was selfish, his choices were also very “human” and were not based on a desire to hurt anyone; in fact, most of his decisions were intended to hurt as few people as possible. Likewise, Celeste hid Dawn’s letter because she truly loved Hank and wanted to hang onto her life with him. Upon learning the truth about her mother’s actions 30 years later, Vivian initially thinks that “[h]er mother is a nightmare” because of “[t]he destruction” that her decision caused. However, although she laments that “[f]ive lives could have been radically different if [Celeste] hadn’t interfered” (361), Vivian is compelled to remember that Celeste was 24 at the time and simply made a rash, youthful mistake. By recognizing that Celeste is now trying to be a better mother, Vivian gains a new measure of perspective on her life and lets go of much of her anger and resentment. She also acknowledges that even she has made similarly significant mistakes, especially with Oscar. Like Celeste, she is now trying to make better, healthier choices for herself.
The Impact of Parental Secrets also comes to the fore as Lucy realizes the connection between the family’s true secrets and the details in one of Celeste’s romance novels. Faced with the hurt that her decisions have caused, Celeste nonetheless admits that she would never have told Vivian about the letter if Lucy hadn’t figured out the truth. In this moment, the presence of yet another family secret convinces Vivian that such secrets are inherently bad for relationships. This thought fuels her own decision to tell her mother the truth about Oscar.
With Vivian’s decision to be honest with her mother, she once again uses Grief as a Catalyst for Personal Transformation. As she reexamines Hank’s motives, she makes allowances for his human flaws and good intentions while also examining her own. The unraveling of Hank and Celeste’s secrets leads her to wonder, “How much time has she spent being mad this summer? Over the course of her life? […] She has every right to be upset, but she’s also sick of her own rage” (363). In this moment, she decides to stop chasing men’s approval, and she acknowledges the similarities between her situation and Hank’s. Relinquishing her anger, she transforms her perspective and changes her life for the better.
Meanwhile, Lucy is still grieving Hank, and although “it pains her to accept who he really was [….] she also feels profoundly, phenomenally lucky, because this nightmare of a summer [has] cemented a real kind of sisterhood between her and Vivian” (373). In this way, grief itself transforms Lucy from someone who needed her father’s and husband’s approval into a confident woman who does not rely on others to validate her worth. Although she has lost her father, job, husband, and home, these losses have cleared the way for something new and something she always wanted: a real relationship with her half-sister.
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