The Last House on the Street

Lying with Rainie in the hammock on their deck after dark, Kayla sees a light that she realizes must be coming from the treehouse. She calls Officer Johns to investigate.

Ellie responds to Win’s letter, telling him where she will be. She climbs into the treehouse and waits for him. She is delighted when he finds her and climbs up beside her. Though she has long said that she would not have sex before she got married, Ellie eagerly has sex with Win. Afterward, they talk about the work they have done for SCOPE. Win asks if she would be willing to marry him if they could figure out a way to carry it off.

After Win leaves and Ellie walks home, she finds her family awake and waiting for her. They confront her about having been with Win and she tells them that she met with him to tell him that their relationship is over. She says that she is going to start seeing Reed again. Her father and mother seem to accept what she says. Ellie struggles to find a way to get word to Win not to return on Thursday night.

Kayla is surprised to find that the person with the light in the treehouse is Ellie. A young police officer escorts her to Kayla, who identifies her. The officer departs and Ellie starts to leave. Kayla insists that Ellie tell her what is on her mind. Ellie proceeds to tell her the whole story.

Ellie is not able to get word to Win not to come to Round Hill to see her on Thursday night. As soon as he comes into the treehouse, she tells him what has happened. He says that he will only stay for a few minutes. He gives Ellie a beautiful silver bracelet engraved, “Ellie—We’ll Fly Away—love, Win” (287). They hear footsteps below and quickly realize that people are gathering. Ellie tells Win to get out of the tree and run. Looking down from above, she sees men in white Klan robes. She hears them saying that they have caught Win. A Klansman climbs up the tree, intent on doing something to Ellie in the treehouse. When his head appears above the floor, Ellie kicks him, and he falls to the ground. She scrambles down from the tree to see if she can save Win. As she watches, restrained, he is tied to the bumper of a pickup truck which she recognizes as Reed’s. She watches helplessly as Win is pulled away.

Her ankle badly twisted, Ellie hobbles home, where Buddy is in the house. She demands that he take her in his truck to look for Win. They start by going to Reed’s house, since it was his truck that pulled Win. At Reed’s house, his truck is missing but Reed is home. He cannot understand Ellie’s furious questioning about what he did and why. He insists that he left his truck at Buddy’s shop to get the bumper fixed. They drive to Buddy’s shop and find that Reed’s truck is indeed there, but the bumper is missing.

With Buddy’s help, Ellie searches through the night. The next morning, her mother tells her that Garner fell from a ladder in the nursery and died. As a result, Brenda lost the baby. Getting on her bike, Ellie rides to Uncle Byron and begs for his help in finding Win. Byron refuses, telling her that the county is too big and Ellie brought this on herself. She rides her bike to the hospital to see Brenda, who says that she never wants to see her again. Riding her bike through the town, at last she finds Reed’s bumper, but Win’s body is not there. Buddy helps her realize how far they must have pulled Win and how he could not have survived. Ellie says that she must tell the other volunteers what happened and then she will leave the town.

Ellie borrows Buddy’s truck and goes to the school to tell Greg what has happened. Greg shouts at her angrily and Ellie thinks, “I was so wounded by Greg’s words, and so deserving of them. I knew his anger masked his grief” (303).

The awful grief Kayla feels after hearing Ellie’s story reminds her of the grief that she felt after Jackson died. She and Ellie debate whether Reed could really have been part of Win‘s murder. Ellie says, “[m]aybe he wasn’t a bigot, but he was a jealous man” (305). Ellie describes the way she became estranged from her family and never formed a serious relationship with anyone after leaving Round Hill. Her relationship with Brenda is more of a truce. Kayla tells her that, before she and Jackson bought the property, Byron Parks had tried to buy it. Kayla says that she has decided to tear down the treehouse.

When Kayla goes to her father’s house the next afternoon to pick up Rainie, she discusses all that Ellie told her. Reed tells her that he knew of many people in Round Hill who were members of the Klan, though he never joined and was warned that he would amount to nothing because he was not in the Klan.

That evening, the superintendent of the fencing company working in her backyard comes to tell her that they have found a human body by the lake.

Officer Johns and other investigators come to Kayla’s house and go to the gravesite by the lake. They come back to Kayla to ask questions. She realizes that she needs to tell Ellie what has happened and involve her in the investigation. Ellie tells the investigators that it was Reed’s truck that drove away with Win tied to the bumper. The police say that they will speak to Reed and to Buddy. That evening, Officer Johns calls to tell Kayla that dental records indicate that the body they found is Win.

Kayla visits her father, who has been interrogated at length by the police. He says that he is going to speak to Buddy about who might have had access to his shop and thus Reed’s keys.

Kayla meets her father in front of the Hockley house. They go together to see Buddy. Buddy sends Kayla into the kitchen for iced tea. She encounters Ellie and sees that Brenda is washing Pat’s hair in the sink. When Kayla tells them about the conversation taking place, Ellie decides to sit in on it. Kayla glimpses a red mark on the inside of Brenda’s wrist, the same mark that she saw on the wrist of Ann Smith, and realizes that Brenda is the person who has been terrorizing her.

Everyone gathers in the living room. Ellie points out to Buddy that he kept his shop keys on the key rack in the kitchen. Pat interrupts the conversation and says, “[i]f you must know, Eleanor, […] everybody was there that night. Back in the woods. […] Everybody was disgusted by you and that boy” (323). Pat confesses that she was the one who drove Reed’s truck because no one else was willing. She also reveals that Danny’s complicity in Win’s murder drove him to take his life. Brenda also confronts Ellie about the fact that the Klansman whom she kicked off the treehouse platform was Garner. Her fear all along was that Kayla might discover the body of Win, which she knew was buried on the property.

A few months after the meeting in the Hockley house, Buddy dies. Ellie and Reed throw a huge pig-picking (a Southern party), inviting all the old-timers in town to celebrate Buddy’s life. Ellie sends her mother back to assisted living and cuts off all contact with Brenda. She sells the property and gives Kayla the right to choose anything she wants before donating the rest of the furniture and personal items to charity. She, Kayla, Reed, and Rainie stand across the street and watch as bulldozers destroy the Hockley house, razing it to splinters. Reed takes Ellie to the airport for her flight back to San Francisco. They have revived their friendship which, Ellie affirms, will never be more than that. Ellie expresses surprise that she was able to find the silver bracelet that Win gave her the night he was killed, stuck between the wall and floor of the treehouse. She looks at it as her plane takes off for California.

The afternoon after Ellie flies back to San Francisco, a new family moves onto the street. Rainie excitedly tells Kayla that there is a girl her age. They introduce themselves to a divorced mom with a little girl named Tara. Kayla invites them to come any time. She cooks supper for her father, whom she thinks will be sad about Ellie leaving. Kayla has brought in a landscaper to transform the circular area in her backyard into a place of meditation and reflection.