Summary

Chapter 15: The narrator says he thinks Lettie is dead, but her mother says she has just been taken by the ocean and might come back someday. Mrs. Hempstock says Lettie does not have a father. She doe not explain the origins of any of the women in the Hempstock household. She tells the narrator to stop asking questions and to get on living his life, since Lettie gave it to him; now he has to “grow up and try to be worth it.” (p. 167)

When the narrator arrives home, it seems just as though he were returning from a sleepover party. When his parents ask Mrs. Hempstock about Lettie, she says she has gone to Australia. The narrator says that he remembers a different story. However, as Mrs. Hempstock explains to his parents, that seems to be just what happened. The narrator’s...