Writing during Hurricane Lizzie in 2025, Lo recounts the truth about Landon’s death. She reflects on her lifelong habit of magical thinking and the guilt she feels over the deaths of her childhood friend Frieda’s family members. Six months after Hurricane Audrey, Lo’s mother, Beth-Anne, confessed that she had murdered Lo’s abusive father during Hurricane Delphine by kicking him out of a tree into floodwaters. Lo felt proud, recognizing her mother’s hidden fierceness and a similar storm within herself.

Lo knew that Landon was occasionally unfaithful but ignored it because she believed she had no right to be jealous. However, Ellen was different. Ellen had been Landon’s pen pal first, though she ended it out of guilt before Lo’s affair began. Landon continued writing to Ellen throughout his relationship with Lo. The day before Hurricane Marie, Lo went to clean the bungalow that Landon had bought for her. There, she found a letter from Ellen in Landon’s jacket pocket. The letter revealed that Ellen had slept with Landon a few months earlier and regretted it, expressing guilt over deceiving Lo.

The truth devastated Lo. She realized that Landon treated both women like toys, collecting what he wanted regardless of consequence. In that moment, standing in the bungalow, Lo decided to murder Landon. She insists that there was no plan to use the storm as cover because no one knew how severe Marie would become. She simply wanted to see his blood on her hands.

At 2:33 a.m. on August 3, 2025, as Hurricane Lizzie strikes, Geneva looks at August and realizes with horror that he has the same dark eyes as Landon and herself. Lo tells August that she eventually recognized his resemblance to Landon. She then points to Geneva, noting that everyone should have seen her likeness to Camile, as well as the fact that she inherited Landon’s smile.

August reveals that he learned Landon was his father from an ancestry kit in December 2022. He describes the shock of discovering that he was a murder victim’s son and the pain of confronting his mother about the affair. He tells Geneva about his horror upon realizing that he nearly slept with his own half-sister. When Geneva says, “This isn’t happening” (231), Lo quietly reveals that Ellen said the same words on the night that Landon died.

August claims that Lo killed Landon after discovering that Ellen was pregnant with Geneva. He adds that at the same time, his own mother was pregnant with him in New Orleans; his name commemorates the month that Landon died. August grabs Geneva’s shoulders, lamenting that Lo robbed them of a potential family with their father. As water seeps into the inn and the storm intensifies, Geneva dismisses his fantasy as “insane.”

Lo interrupts, arguing that Landon deserves blame for all the secrets and destruction, not her. She then confesses to August, giving him his desired ending: She claims that she called Landon to the Rosalie Inn after learning that Ellen was pregnant and then killed him with a piece of an old anchor. She claims that she has never felt a second of remorse. As August roars with rage and Lo reaches for the hammer, a massive tree limb crashes through the lobby window. Hurricane Lizzie slams into the Rosalie Inn, and death follows.

Ellen writes her account of August 4-5, 1984. On what became the last day of her normal life, she decided to tell Landon about her pregnancy. Ellen went to Lo’s empty bungalow and called Landon’s office, pretending to be Lo. When she revealed her identity, his tone softened. She told him she missed him.

After midnight, Landon appeared at her window in a rain-soaked tuxedo, having driven from a political event in Birmingham. On the porch, Ellen immediately told him she was pregnant. His smile faded but then returned as something tight and false. He proposed a cruel plan: Ellen would hide away to have the baby; he and Alison would adopt it; and, years later, he would divorce Alison to marry Ellen and become a family. Ellen refused, seeing him as a spoiled child grabbing everything for himself.

Lo suddenly appeared and attacked Landon. When Lo threatened to expose his affairs to the press, destroying his and his father’s political careers, an enraged Landon grabbed her, pushed her against the railing, and screamed that she was nothing to him. Ellen saw real fear in Lo’s eyes and realized that she, like Lo, was also nothing to Landon, so she reached for a weapon. Her hand closed around a 20-pound boat anchor left by the door. She swung it, striking Landon in the head.

Landon staggered and fell into the sand. Lo took the anchor, went down the steps, and struck him again until he was still. She returned to a stunned Ellen, took her face in bloody hands, and told her, “It was both of us” (251), sharing the blame for Landon’s death. They tried to drag his body to the water but were too weak. Lo revealed that her own mother had killed her father during a hurricane, blaming the storm. As the two women waded into the surf to wash the anchor, Hurricane Marie unexpectedly intensified from a Category 1 to a Category 3, as if they had called it.

In the present, Geneva grabs the hammer after Lo accidentally kicks it away. August attacks Lo, shoving her toward the broken window frame. Lo’s feet are cut on glass, and her hand is gashed on a window shard. August screams that Lo killed their father and attacked Edie. Lo denies hurting Edie and pleads with Geneva to believe her.

August yells at Geneva to hit Lo with the hammer. To stop August from hurting Lo, Geneva swings and hits him in the shoulder blade. August grabs the hammer from Geneva and turns back toward Lo. Geneva and Lo both push August away. He stumbles backward into the jagged glass of the broken window. A large shard slices his throat, killing him. As Geneva clutches Lo, a roar sounds from upstairs as the roof of the Rosalie Inn is torn off by Hurricane Lizzie.

A newspaper article from the Columbus Dispatch dated August 6, 2025, reports that journalist and author August Fletcher died from injuries sustained during Hurricane Lizzie while staying at the Rosalie Inn in St. Medard’s Bay, Alabama. He was working on a book with local woman Gloria Bailey, who was accused of murder during Hurricane Marie in 1984. Coroner Robert Byrd, Jr. states that Fletcher was killed by storm debris. The Rosalie Inn sustained significant damage, and Fletcher was one of only two deaths from the hurricane.

On December 20, 2025, Lo returns to St. Medard’s Bay. Geneva finds her on the beach in front of the damaged but repairable Rosalie Inn. The only other storm victim was Cap, who died of a heart attack while evacuating. After the storm, Geneva stayed at Hope House with her mother, traumatized by nightmares and panic attacks. Lo visited and told Geneva what really happened the night Landon died: Ellen struck him first with the anchor, and Lo delivered the final blows. Seeing the parallel between her mother’s actions and her own, Geneva was motivated to rebuild the Rosalie.

Geneva tells Lo that the Fitzroy family has been calling. August’s manuscript was found on his laptop and leaked to the press, making the story of his and Geneva’s parentage public. Geneva told the police that August died in a freak accident while trying to board a window during the storm. Lo reveals that she will appear on Dateline but has stuck to her original story in all the interviews, protecting Geneva’s privacy and denying August’s claims. She refuses to tell the full truth because she will not betray her fellow “witches.”

Edie, recovered but physically weaker, joins them on the beach. She reveals that August attacked her after she confronted him about his journal, where he wrote of Lo in the past tense. Edie now lives at the inn with Geneva, and she and Lo have reconciled. Edie makes a final confession: She was also at the Rosalie the night Landon died. She implies that she had romantic feelings for Ellen and came to check on her during the storm. She hid and witnessed everything—the argument, Ellen hitting Landon, and Lo finishing it. After they went inside, Edie tried to drag Landon’s body farther toward the water to protect them, but the intensifying storm frightened her away.

Lo realizes that all three women were involved. Edie explains that her testimony against Lo was meant to draw suspicion away from Ellen, though she admits that it was also fueled by lingering resentment over her family members’ deaths. Geneva takes out her mother’s bracelet that’s engraved with the letter “L,” which has been falling off Ellen’s wrist at Hope House. Geneva wonders if this means her mother is finally free of Landon’s hold. She throws the bracelet into the ocean as an offering. Lo and Edie take her hands. Lo tells Geneva that they will make a “witch” of her yet, and Geneva, thinking of the blood spilled at her home, replies that they already have.