Chapter 37 Summary: 6:00 a.m.
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The chapter opens at 6:00 a.m. in the kitchen of Nina's Malibu house, where the five siblings—Nina, Kit, Hud, Jay, and Casey—are gathered around the island, picking at a cracker tray. It takes exactly fifty-two minutes for them to convince Nina to leave.
Kit is the first to propose the idea: Nina should fly to Portugal immediately. Nina dismisses the suggestion repeatedly, but Jay begins to echo Kit, pointing out that Nina doesn't want to live in Malibu anymore, doesn't want to be with Brandon, and doesn't want the attention or the burden of explaining herself to anyone. He urges her to leave without telling anyone.
Nina raises practical objections. She worries that Brandon will still know where she is, that people will still know her father, and that everyone will learn she was cheated on—that her husband left her for Carrie Soto. Casey steps in with a blunt, profane assessment of Carrie Soto, quoting her own mother's phrase for someone truly contemptible. Nina agrees with her, and Kit notices that the old Nina—the nice girl who always said the polite thing—has begun to disappear, replaced by someone willing to call out the woman who slept with her husband.
Kit lays out a plan: Nina leaves now, the party's chaos will be reported in the papers, and people will assume she ran off with someone—or even that she died. Either way, they will leave her alone. Kit promises to tell Mick and Tarine the truth, and to keep the secret from everyone else. Nina would take cash, drive to the airport, and buy a one-way ticket to Portugal. She could rent a small house, see if she likes it, and come home if she doesn't. Kit, Hud, and Jay would visit constantly, using surf shoots as cover.
Nina protests that she can't leave her siblings—that they need her. Kit responds firmly: they love her and want her around, but she no longer needs to take care of them. Hud agrees. Jay tells Nina that the plan is totally unlike her, and that is exactly why she should do it.
The siblings acknowledge, one by one, that Nina has spent her whole life making up for their parents—that no matter how drunk their mother got or how absent their father was, Nina was always there. Casey, who barely knows Nina, says she has already felt that same steadiness from her. Kit reflects on what it would be like to be someone's older sister, to pass along what she has figured out, and realizes she wants that.
Nina asks about logistics: what if someone finds her car at the airport? Casey offers her red pickup truck, parked past the bluffs because she was intimidated by the valets and the fancy cars. The truck is registered in Casey's father's name and has three-quarters of a tank of gas—enough to get Nina to any airport she chooses.
Kit tells Nina to fly to Portugal and do something for herself, for once, just for a little while. It is the phrase