At the North Road Café, the group orders burritos and large coffees and eats in exhausted silence at a picnic table. Matilda feels disconnected from the cheerful tourists around them, as if she and the boys live in a different, sadder world. Using her phone, she reads news coverage of Kingsley’s death. All the articles are based on the same press release and make no mention of the Sinclair family or Kingsley’s true past. Meer explains that Kingsley paid to scrub his personal details from the internet and burned his birth certificate. The obituaries list only June and Meer as survivors and predict Kingsley’s paintings will skyrocket in value.

The boys begin sharing memories of Kingsley. Brock tells a story about a fish market owner who rejected a painting and called Kingsley a weirdo. Tatum recalls Kingsley eating Oreos at a school band night. Meer remembers receiving a giant stuffed elephant named Laxative when he was four.

Matilda checks her phone and finds increasingly worried texts from Saar, the last stating he is on his way. She texts him that her father died. He calls immediately.

On the phone, Saar tells Matilda he is at the Martha’s Vineyard airport. He explains that her prolonged silence made him seriously worried. UC Irvine had also contacted him because Matilda never filled out her class selection form. He decided to fly across the country to check on her. Matilda gives him directions to the café.

When Saar arrives in a Range Rover, the boys ask who he is. Brock refers to him as a dad-type person. Matilda is about to correct him but has an epiphany as she watches Saar climb out of the car. She realizes Saar has been acting as a father figure: He helped with her college applications, provides her a home, buys groceries she likes, texts when he stays at his girlfriend’s so she does not worry, bought her a college sweatshirt, plans to take her shopping for dorm supplies, included her in his family’s Hanukkah celebration, and just traveled 3,000 miles out of concern. Matilda tells the boys she did not know she had a dad-type person, but it turns out she does.

At a hotel bar, Matilda tries to explain the entire summer to Saar over lemonade. She describes her desire to meet her father, her love for her brother and Tatum, and the complex web of connections to the island, the family history, and Kingsley’s paintings. She struggles to articulate how her father never meant to know her, yet his paintings of her may live in museums for centuries after she is gone.

They return to Hidden Beach. Saar helps Matilda pack her belongings, including an indigo Shirley’s Hardware T-shirt Meer gave her. Downstairs, Saar studies Cliffside Gothic for a long time before deducing that the three daughters in the painting represent Kingsley and his brothers. Matilda confirms his theory, stating that Kingsley was always considered not good enough. Saar then compares Kingsley to Cinderella, who left home and made a new life in a castle.

Matilda and Saar find Meer sobbing at the dining room table, surrounded by crumpled toilet paper, with Brock comforting him. June has gone to sleep. As Matilda shows Saar around the kitchen and pantry, Meer begins writing Kingsley’s name repeatedly on his left forearm with a Sharpie, covering his palm and fingers. Matilda offers her own arms. Meer writes Kingsley’s name on one and a declaration of their permanent siblinghood on the other. She reciprocates on his arm, then writes a message of friendship and identity on Brock’s arm.

Matilda takes Saar to see the gardens and down to the beach. Tatum is in the water on his boogie board, and Meer has written a memorial to Kingsley across his back in Sharpie. Matilda calls to Tatum, who rides a wave in. Saar hugs him.

While Tatum showers, Matilda goes to Kingsley’s studio for a final look. She reflects that, although she and her father only had two short conversations, he truly saw her in his paintings, capturing not just a girl in a college sweatshirt but the dark, strong, and magical qualities she possessed.

Matilda’s bags and the painting Lost are loaded into Saar’s Range Rover. Though she has no paperwork for the painting, she takes it because Meer insists she should have it. Matilda hugs Meer and Brock goodbye. The plan is for them to stay with June while Gabe sorts out Kingsley’s will and financials, then move to Los Angeles. Brock will look for acting work, and Meer will figure something out.

Tatum emerges from the castle with his guitar and bag, ready to leave with Matilda and Saar. He says his goodbyes. Matilda reflects that while all four of them are grieving, they have also been liberated from Hidden Beach. She, Tatum, Saar, and Glum drive down the overgrown driveway. Glum sticks her head out the window, grinning as her ears flap in the wind. They turn right onto South Road, heading down-island and toward the future.

Kingsley willed his castle and all his assets to his firstborn son, Meer, just as Jonathan Sinclair had favored Harris. Tatum, Brock, and Matilda received nothing. Meer provides a generous lifelong annuity for June, who moves to Oak Bluffs and begins working for a bakery. Meer then sells the castle while Gabe arranges the storage and sale of Kingsley’s art. Brock organizes cleaning teams and donations.

Brock has found healing and sobriety. He now works as a voice actor and lives with Meer in a Venice Beach loft near Saar’s bungalow. Matilda continues to live with Saar during college breaks; he is her dad-type person. Meer manages his inheritance through investments and philanthropy, apprentices as a tattoo artist, and has a boyfriend who studies poetry at Occidental.

Meer arranges a retrospective of Kingsley’s work at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, borrowing Lost from Matilda, Selkie Child from Tatum, Sammy from Holland’s mother, and Persephone Escapes the Underworld from a St. Louis museum. The exhibition brings Isadora from Mexico City. Matilda’s reunion with her mother is civil but distant. She realizes that the importance of blood ties is subjective and that her mother will not change. Holland, now at Brown and in love with Winnie, maintains their family connection through frequent texts. Meer sets up educational trusts for both Matilda and Tatum, enough to cover school and far beyond. Brock refuses a trust but accepts three paintings as a birthday gift. Matilda, nearing the end of her junior year at UC Irvine, studies game design and other subjects, while Tatum pursues herbalism certification at a nearby school. They live together with roommates in a house within walking distance of the ocean.

For her thesis, Matilda is building a video game called Chandelier. The player begins adrift on a raft in a storm and arrives at a seemingly abandoned castle that is half flooded. The player must navigate rooms at varying water levels, sometimes in human form and sometimes transformed into a seal. In every level, a chandelier comes to life and becomes a threat: green glass tentacles that squeeze, a weaving that traps like a spider’s web, a dragon that, once defeated, reveals a frightened little boy, aggressive wolfhounds that can be tamed by saying their names, or black ash that nearly suffocates the player.

Matilda’s advisor asks about the game’s objective and suggests a prisoner to rescue. Matilda disagrees, explaining that the game is about the player’s transformation from lost and weak to powerful and knowledgeable. The ending places the player on the castle’s top floor, where they can look out and situate themselves in the world. The advisor tells her to keep working on it.

Matilda and Tatum live a regular college life. In the evenings, they cook dinner with their roommates or get burgers down the block. They go to hear bands, or Tatum plays guitar while Matilda does homework. They walk to the gelato place, attend parties, and go to campus events. Someday soon they will graduate and need jobs, and something may pull them apart.

But their love is an everyday magic. Matilda shares it with someone who sees all her different facets. Although her new life comes with its own obligations, she is relieved to be free from June’s rules and from the complex family dynamics and secrets she was surrounded by at Hidden Beach. She notes that even the ocean by their new home feels entirely different from the one at Hidden Beach.