Cadence “Cady” Eastman Character Analysis

I am nearly eighteen. I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects. I used to be blond, but now my hair is black. I used to be strong, but now I am weak. I used to be pretty, but now I look sick.

“Maybe land shouldn’t belong to people at all. Or maybe there should be limits on what they can own.” He leaned forward. “When I went to India this winter, on that volunteer trip, we were building toilets. Building them because people there, in this one village, didn’t have them.”

“We all know you went to India […] You told us like forty-seven times.”

“Watch yourself, young man,” said Granddad, sharp and sudden.

“Pardon me?”

“Your head. You could get hurt.”

“You’re right,” said Gat. “You’re right, I could get hurt.”

Do you understand, Cady? Silence is a protective coating over pain.

I am not immune to the feeling of being viewed as a mystery, as a Sinclair, as part of a privileged clan of special people, and as part of a magical, important narrative, just because I am part of this clan.

“Beauty is a valid use,” Mummy argues. “It creates a sense of place, a sense of personal history. Pleasure, even, Cadence. Have you ever heard of pleasure?”

You began asking me the day you woke in the hospital. ‘What happened? What happened?’ I told you the truth, Cadence, I always did, and you’d repeat it back to me. But the next day you’d ask again.

“Cadence was the first, and it didn’t matter that she was a girl. I would give her everything. Just like a grandson. I carried her in my arms and danced. She was the future of our family.”

“I have a boyfriend named Drake Loggerhead,” says Mirren. “He’s going to Pomona like I am. We have had sexual intercourse quite a number of times, but always with protection. He brings me yellow roses every week and has nice muscles.”

A witch has been standing there behind me for some time, waiting for a moment of weakness. She holds an ivory statue of a goose. It is intricately carved. I turn and admire it only for a moment before she swings it with shocking force. It connects, crushing a hole in my forehead.

“I started over with this house,” he says simply. “That old life is gone.”

“You feel like you know me, Cady, but you only know the me who comes here,” he says. “It’s—its just not the whole picture. You don’t know my bedroom with the window onto the airshaft, my mom’s curry, the guys from school, the way we celebrate holidays. You only know the me on this island, where everyone’s rich except me and the staff.”

Now, at the breakfast table, watching him eat my toast, “Don’t take no for an answer” seemed like the attitude of a privileged guy who didn’t care who got hurt, so long as his wife had the cute statues she wanted to display in her summerhouses.

I wish I had her life. A boyfriend, plans, college in California. Mirren is going off into her sunshine future, whereas I am going back to Dickenson Academy to another year of snow and suffocation.

“Someone did something to me that is too awful to remember.”

Look. A fire. There on the southern tip of Beechwood Island. Where the maple tree stands over the wide lawn. The house is alight. The flames shoot high, brightening the sky.

Carrie lived with Ed. The Two of them bought art that might or might not be valuable later. Johnny and Will went to private school. Carrie had started a jewelry boutique with her trust and ran it for a number of years until it failed. Ed earned money, and he supported her, but Carrie didn’t have an income of her own. And they weren’t married. He owned their apartment and she didn’t.

“He knows he’s not supposed to be that guy. He’s a Democrat, he voted for Obama—but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable having people of color in his beautiful family.”

Cadence Sinclair Eastman was present on the island at the time of the fire but did not notice it until it was well underway.

I cry for my aunts, who lost their firstborn children. For Will, who lost his brother. For Liberty, Bonnie, and Taft, who lost their sister. For Granddad, who saw not just his palace burn to the ground, but his grandchildren perish. For the dogs, the poor naughty dogs.

I love you in spite of my grief. Even though you are crazy. I love you in spite of what I suspect you have done.

“I want to be an accepting person, but I am so full of leftover rage. I imagined I’d be saintly and wise, but instead I’ve been jealous of you, mad at the rest of my family.”