Everything I Never Told You

The novel returns to the present narrative. James goes home and is confronted by Marilyn, who seethes that Louisa would “make a very nice little wife” (241). When Marilyn says she thought James was “different,” meaning different from the philandering type of man, James perceives to the racial variant of “different” that has always hurt him. He tells her that she has no idea “what it’s like being different” (242). Marilyn retorts that she experienced difference in being the only woman among men in Harvard’s science labs, and that she wanted Lydia to be “exceptional” where James wanted her to be normal (243). James storms out, telling Marilyn that they should pretend they had never met and that Lydia was never born.

Hannah and Nath overhear the entirety of this conversation. Nath storms out. Meanwhile, Marilyn goes through Lydia’s books and realizes that Lydia lied about losing the Betty Crocker book. Instead, she buried it out of her mother’s sight. In a flash, Marilyn realizes that Lydia was not interested in science but in acquiring her mother’s love. Marilyn dreads that her ambitions for Lydia “dragged” her “underwater” (247). She then embraces Hannah, who is standing in the doorway and resembles a small Lydia.

Nath, meanwhile, is at a bar drinking whiskey until he vomits and passes out. Officer Fiske finds him and offers to take him home.

James does not drive to Louisa’s but to Toledo. He finally realizes that Marilyn was never bothered by their racial difference. Rather, she was propelled by a vision of being different from her mother and of “packing those dreams away in lavender for their daughter” (251).

Lydia overhears Nath preparing for his campus visit to Harvard. She would like to broach the subject of James’s relationship with Louisa. However, Nath is so excited that she does not know how to raise the issue. He points out the night sky to her, and they look at the stars and contemplate infinity. Lydia is overwhelmed with emotion and sadness. She tries to make Nath call her while he is in Boston, but he is so distracted that he forgets.

In Nath’s absence Hannah has been shadowing Lydia. Lydia discovers that Hannah is wearing the silver locket that James gave her. Lydia slaps Hannah and snatches the chain off her sister’s neck, breaking it. Lydia tells Hannah that she does not want the expectations that come along with the locket, and that she should promise to never “smile if you don’t want to” (261). Hannah remembers this conversation for a long time.

Lydia tries to call Nath at Harvard, but drunk on his first beer, he sounds cold and dismissive. He tells his sister to take her “problems to Jack” (264). In a desire to take revenge on Nath, Lydia seeks out Jack the following day. While they are in his car, they go to the Point, the fabled locale where Jack has seduced many girls, and Lydia plucks out the condoms from his glove compartment. She tries to seduce Jack into taking her virginity, with the line that she is the one who truly knows him. Jack, however, pulls away and tells Lydia that while he cares for her, the one he truly desires is Nath. Lydia realizes that every time they have met, Jack has asked her about Nath. Lydia feels scorned and affirms that Nath hates Jack. Jack retorts, “at least I don’t let other people tell me what to do all the time. At least I’m not afraid” (269). Lydia jumps out of the car and runs home, shoving the box of condoms into her bookbag when her mother greets her on the lawn.

Nath returns home and chatters happily about his time at Harvard. Marilyn remembers the lilacs, and James the lunches at Charlie’s Kitchen, where he dined with Marilyn. Lydia, meanwhile, sits silently and asks herself, “how had this all gone so wrong?” (272).

Unable to sleep, Lydia goes to the lake and realizes that “Jack was right: she had been afraid so long, she had forgotten what it was like not to be” (272). She realizes that she lost herself in an effort to please her parents, so her mother would not leave and her father would not crumble. Now, she is afraid of losing Nath, who understands their family’s predicament and “had always kept her afloat” (273). Lydia decides that it “all went wrong” when she began to rely on Nath and that “she will begin again” as a person who does not pretend to be the supplement for her parents’ dreams and insecurities (274). She decides that she must cross the lake in a rowboat in a rite of passage that will “seal her promises […] make them real” (275). Once she is in the middle of the lake, she tells herself that she will swim, which she has long been afraid to do.

James returns home with the feeling that “it is not too late” to right old wrongs (277). He finds Hannah and embraces her, and then he and Marilyn talk. She forgives him, and they cement their bond, groping “for the words that say what they mean” (283). James never speaks to Louisa again, but it is a while before his relationship with Nath is repaired.

The next morning Marilyn goes to Lydia’s room. She acknowledges that she was wrong to be so confident about her daughter’s future and accepts that she must move on. She has a final vision of Lydia, sleeping in her bed.

When Nath wakes up hungover, he spots Jack from the window. He realizes that this is his only chance to bring Jack to justice and follows him to the lake. Hannah, who knows her brother’s violent intentions, follows him and tries to stop him. Still, Nath catches up to Jack on the dock and punches him twice. Jack does not retaliate, and Nath only stops his attack when he sees Hannah’s devastated face as she pushes him back.

As Nath falls off the dock and into the water, he tries to imagine Lydia’s experience of drowning. He looks up to see Hannah’s face and takes Jack’s hand. Jack and Nath are reconciled. One day, Nath finds himself looking “at the small bump that will always mar Jack’s nose and wants to trace it, gently, with his finger” (291).

Years after Lydia’s drowning, the family is still trying to understand her and the reasons for her drowning. However, they keep her alive in their minds, and Nath thinks of Lydia “at every important moment of his life” (291).