End of Story

Madeleine goes into Cole’s old room. She finds the diary under the floorboards and reads.

The bartender at Betty’s recognizes and welcomes Nicky. Freddy is in the corner. He confesses to using drugs for nine months. He started stealing them at the school he taught at until he was caught, fired, and evicted. He figured no one would know if small things went missing, but now he needs more money and raided Sebastian’s desk. He was wearing the mask in the library because he was going to make a video for his buyers. He asks what happened with Diana and confesses he’s loved her since he was a kid. He cries, and Nicky holds his hands. He says Betty is checking him into a clinic, and Nicky gives him some cash. When Nicky asks, he says he doesn’t want to know what happened the night his dad died in a hit-and-run; some stories end without anyone knowing what happened. Nicky says she doesn’t like those stories.

Madeleine reads about Cole self-harming and what the bullying was like at school. She reads about herself telling him he’s an embarrassment and how he’s determined to read The Count of Monte Cristo. After he writes, “Something exiting is hapening!!” the writing stops (319). She texts him that she didn’t realize how bad it was. Cole texts back that he wants Madeleine to ask about New Year’s Eve and to be scared. Under the back cover, she finds something inside the flap. It is a postcard from someone named Sam Turner in Seattle. She thinks about the times Hope and Cole went on road trips and wonders if they went to Seattle. She texts Freddy to come home and asks if he knew Sam Turner.

Detective Martinez calls Nicky, saying Freddy had come to the station to make a statement. Nicky finds a folded note under the door from Sebastian; he’s in the library. They talk about the nature of grief, and he compliments her work and gives her edits. He asks if she knows what’s going on yet, and she confesses she doesn’t. He says he gave up writing his detective because he got tired of being with someone who could solve every mystery when Sebastian couldn’t solve his own. Diana persuaded him to start again. He suddenly feels tired, and Nicky helps him get up.

Nicky suggests the elevator. There is a storm, and the power goes out, leaving them stopped in darkness. They hold hands in the dark, and Nicky asks if he hears footsteps in the hallway. The generator kicks on, and the elevator continues, though they are both spooked. They step out and see a paper butterfly on the carpet with the words “last chance” written on the wings (334). They hear running steps.

As Madeleine enters the house, she hears her father yell and runs up the stairs. Nicky is holding a paper butterfly. They both help Sebastian to his bedroom. Madeleine tells Nicky to call the police. Madeleine watches her father as she listens to Nicky recount what happened.

Nicky puts off calling Jonathan, who is down the street at a bar. The detectives arrive saying that if they heard footsteps, there may still be someone inside. They ask if anyone has heard from Cole. They decide to go interview Jonathan at the bar. When they leave with Madeleine to talk about security, Sebastian asks Nicky to make it stop and she says she doesn’t know how.

Madeleine leaves messages with or talks to multiple Sam Turners. None are a connection to Cole. Before she goes to sleep, she texts Cole.

Nicky watches Sebastian quietly sleep, then she leaves and looks at the photos she got from the Trapper Keeper. She thinks she sees a clue but realizes it doesn’t prove anything.

Watson wakes Madeleine by barking at Sebastian, who tells her to get moving because they are going sunrising. Madeleine pulls on clothes, grabs something from her jewelry box, and leaves.

Nicky wakes up thinking Sebastian snores and doesn’t sleep quietly. She looks out the window and sees a strange car parked across the street. She notices Madeleine get into the Jaguar. When she gets up, there is an envelope at the door. It’s a letter from Sebastian saying he took the lives of his wife and child and that there are clues at the top of the letter.

Nicky checks the house and finds no one, and the fire, which has always been lit, has gone out. Madeleine has left a note on the fridge saying they are going to the Lands End labyrinth for the sunrise and asks if Nicky will feed Watson. Nicky calls Martinez, telling him what’s going on. He says he knows they’ve left because he’s outside. Nicky asks why he didn’t follow them, and he says he was to be surveillance and couldn’t see the driver. She hands him the confession, and when Martinez asks if Sebastian will hurt his daughter, Nicky counters, asking about Sebastian’s wife. She thinks something isn’t correct in the confession. Martinez tells her the truth about Jonathan, that he was a journalist wanting to crack the Trapp case, so he made up his identity to get close to the family.

In the parking lot, Sebastian and Madeleine sit overlooking the water while he smokes his pipe. Madeleine feels afraid as he talks about how saying goodbye is like dying a little. They get out of the car and begin to hike along the coast toward the labyrinth, where Sebastian stops and puts down the blanket.

Sebastian tells familiar stories to Madeleine but also shares a story of his past attempt at death by suicide in that very spot. Her mother saved him, and Cole was conceived. They talk about living with fear and having children; he thinks she’d be a good mother. He tells her to take the Jaguar home. She gets up to leave, but her phone buzzes. She reads a message and goes back to ask her father if he has the gun, which he is holding.

Sebastian pleads with Madeleine to go home and tells Detective Martinez to put away his own gun. The detective says the old Webley from his desk won’t fire, and Sebastian shoots to prove it does. Nicky appears, despite Martinez saying she should stay back.

Nicky feels alive, knowing she is coming to the end of the mystery. She holds the letter and says Sebastian has confessed to murdering his wife. Madeleine gasps. Sebastian fires the gun.

The shot goes through the blanket rising in the wind. Martinez asks if Sebastian wrote the other notes and folded the butterflies. He says Cole did. Madeleine blurts out that Cole contacted her, but she hasn’t seen him. She asks if Martinez, with his blond hair and blue eyes, is Cole. She asks for him to forgive her. Instead, Nicky responds that she will forgive her.

Nicky says that when she was 14, she told her mother she was in the wrong body. She shows them the scars from her past self-harm and says they went to Seattle to see a doctor who specialized in adolescent psychiatry, Sam Turner. They started therapy and met with doctors, going to Seattle every eight weeks for treatment. They stayed with Sam and his wife, Millie. Cole wrote postcards to his future self, Nicky, as part of the treatment. Sebastian burning his origami butterflies one Christmas was the deciding factor for Hope: She and Cole would go to Seattle for good. On New Year’s Eve, Hope gave Cole a blonde wig, sweater, and skirt. They were to meet at 3 am at Fort Point and then go by taxi to the train station. That night, Cole took the top bunk at Freddy’s, waited for the appropriate time, and then took the bike to the meeting spot, where he changed and put on the wig. He felt natural and powerful. Hope didn’t come, so Cole went to Seattle as planned. The next day, he saw the newspaper declaring a mother and son missing. Cole proceeded with the treatment but worried Sebastian had hurt Hope. Cole waited to hear any news. The Turners raised Nicky and helped her grow. She tells them about the wonderful life she’s had and says origami and detective stories survived Cole and are still in her life. She was able to live as herself only after she left Trapp house. Nicky, however, always wondered what happened to her mother and suspected Sebastian got away with murder.

Nicky found a Simon St. John book dedicated to Cole and decided to write to Sebastian. She’d found an error, which seemed like a good way in, and used a butterfly postage stamp from a roll purchased on one of Sebastian and Cole’s rare happy outings. The letters led to a relationship. Nicky is now back in her old room, and no one recognized her as she listened for clues about Hope. She tried getting Sebastian to talk by using the origami butterflies, but he wouldn’t, so Nicky began texting Madeleine to get her to help. She didn’t expect Diana to be killed, however. Nicky says the note Sebastian wrote is wrong since he didn’t take Cole’s life. Sebastian says that he’s known Nicky was Cole all along.

Sebastian says the stamp clued him in; he remembered that good day. He tried to track Cole down but got Nicky’s photo instead. He instantly recognized who she was. He addressed the letter back to Mr. or Ms. Nicky Hunter. He invited Nicky to the house to get to know her before he died. He was surprised when Nicky left the message on the butterfly asking what happened to Hope. Nicky asks if Simone helped him murder Hope, as Simone is wearing a necklace Cole gave Hope the night she died. Madeleine holds up the necklace and says she killed Hope and took the necklace after.

Madeleine tells them what happened that night. She had come home from college early and saw her mother leaving her own party, and Simone dropping Hope off at a liquor store. Madeleine watched her mother walk toward Fort Point. It was after 2 am, and Hope stopped by the seawall and waited. Madeleine scared her when she confronted her, but Hope explained that she and Cole were leaving. Madeleine was furious, accusing her of taking Cole’s side and calling Cole a freak. Her mother slapped her and then felt awful. She pushed her mother, and Hope fell, hitting her head on a post on the seawall. Madeleine panicked and imagined her father there, yelling at her. She put her mother in the car and knew where to take her so the tides wouldn’t bring her back. She dropped Hope over a cliff after kissing her. She noticed the necklace in the grass and kept it instead of throwing it in the ocean.

Madeleine is still holding the necklace; she says she knows she shouldn’t have kept it. She says she drove back to school and was seen by the man her roommate spent the night with, creating her alibi. She came home the next day and put the necklace in her jewelry box, where it stayed for 20 years until Simone decided to borrow jewelry. Simone gave it to Diana to return it when Madeleine wouldn’t answer her door, and Diana realized the truth.

Nicky thinks this is the wrong ending, considering how many years she’s hated Sebastian. Sebastian realized he and Nicky both didn’t know what happened to Hope. Now, Nicky feels bad for Madeleine, as she can see it’s haunted her. Sebastian continues telling the story about Diana, saying she came to his room asking how Madeleine got the necklace, having just seen it being gifted to Hope by Cole in the home video of her birthday. Sebastian was looking at a photo of his four-year-old daughter laughing, holding a lump of glass from his dressing table as Diana figured it out and said she was going to the police. Sebastian turned and hit her in the head with the glass. He knew she was dead instantly. He carried her down the hall and put her in the koi pond. He knew there was a journal she kept when she was grieving, and he left a page for the police to find as a suicide note. Then he waited for someone to find her. His letter is true, he says, because he took both wives’ lives, one physically and one by failing her and his child. He gave up his life for Madeleine because she gave up everything to care for him. He brought his daughter there to say goodbye.

When Nicky asks why Sebastian has the gun, he says he will be shooting it. Sebastian tells her she became who she always was. He tells Madeleine there’s no harm done. He tells Nicky she is a good detective, even as Detective Martinez tries to stop Sebastian from moving toward the center of the labyrinth with his gun. He says he also has rolls of the butterfly stamps that he would look at constantly. He says that if Nicky is to write a novel, she should not let it wait too long. He shoots himself in the head.

Detective Martinez goes to get cell service and help, having covered the body with the blanket. Nicky and Madeleine walk back toward the parking lot, Nicky horrified that she’d been wrong for so long. Madeleine says she stayed home because it seemed fair. She loved their mother, as she was an amazing woman. She wonders why the police haven’t arrested her, and Nicky says the death was an accident. Madeleine says she’s truly happy for Nicky and is glad Nicky got to be with their dad. She looks at Nicky and says she should have known she was Cole, that she’s beautiful, but she always was.

Nicky walks through the house with Watson and looks at the portrait of the family. She goes into the library and turns the fire back on. She sits in the chair and looks in the drawer, where the butterfly stamps are kept. She puts on her mother’s necklace. She looks at the cryptic note on the letter about Sebastian’s legacy. She looks through the books in the library until she finds Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. She pulls the book out and reaches behind it, finding a manuscript dedicated to Cole. A note from Sebastian addressed to Nicky says that by claiming responsibility for Cole’s death, Cole has the option to stay undisturbed if he chooses. This final book reveals who Jack is, and it is up to Nicky to decide what to do with it, whether to share it or burn it. The note asks her to be kind to Madeleine. Nicky begins to read the book.