We Were Liars

Cady's slow healing is depicted through her interactions with others. When she returns to Beechwood, she enters into conversations with the "Littles," her younger cousins. In a further sign of slow recovery, she adopts a parental role with them. She is now the older relative who can advise and comfort them when needed. Cady is slowly becoming an adult, and this eventually will mean coming to terms with her past and integrating the broken pieces of herself that were shattered two summers earlier, when the disaster happened. Her encounters with the dead Liars can be either seen as encounters with real ghosts who haunt the house and who cannot be laid to complete rest until Cady releases them by healing herself, or seen as efforts on her part to bring the different pieces of her broken self back together.

Gat is the love she lost, and he represents an important part of herself—her ability to give herself fully to someone else. She cannot do that again until she assumes responsibility for Gat's death and rids herself of her feeling of guilt. For the moment, her efforts at healing are misguided. She gives things away, making a sacrifice of herself as partial payment for the harm she has done. But that is not enough. Cady’s mother counsels Cady to not erase herself. The whole point of Cady’s healing process if for her to rediscover the self she lost two summers earlier. That self will have to include full knowledge of the wrong she committed.