Sharp Objects: Epilogue Summary & Analysis

Adora is found guilty of murder in the first degree for what she did to Marian, and her lawyer begins planning an appeal. The Wind Gap house is abandoned—Alan has moved into an apartment near the prison where Adora is incarcerated. As the story spreads, “quickie paperbacks” detailing the lurid tale are published, and Camille is “showered with book offers.” Curry pushes her to take one, but quickly backs off.

Camille receives a letter from John Keene. In it, he writes that he suspected Amma all along, and moved into Meredith’s place to “keep watch.” Camille doesn’t hear anything from Richard—she knew, from the way he looked at her body when he saw her scars, that he would never contact her again.

Amma is locked up in a juvenile facility, and will probably be incarcerated well past her eighteenth birthday. Camille has only visited once, and though she promised herself before the visit that she would not ask about the killings, her questions began tumbling out as soon as she saw Amma. Amma admitted that she was friends with the girls for a while—they would run wild together in the woods, hurting and killing stray animals. When Adora, however, “got all interested” in Ann and Natalie, the girls started coming by the house and asking questions about Amma’s sicknesses. Amma worried that the girls would “ruin everything,” but the final straw came when Ann bit Adora—Amma couldn’t stop thinking about “why Ann could bite [Adora]” while she herself could not. As for the teeth, Amma says that she only took them because she needed them to make the dollhouse “perfect.”

Camille speculates that Ann and Natalie died because Adora paid attention to them. Camille believes that Amma, who allowed Adora to sicken her for so long in an attempt to control Adora in exchange for “uncontested love and loyalty,” grew angry when “other little girls” entered the picture. Camille believes that this is the same reason Amma killed Lily—because she believed Camille liked her better. Camille is exhausted by trying to figure out her sister’s motives, though, and in the end she believes that Amma just enjoys violence: “A child weaned on poison,” Camille posits, “considers harm a comfort. 

Camille reveals that she relapsed on the day of Amma’s arrest. Though Curry and Eileen came over to provide support and comfort, Camille snuck a knife into the bathroom and used it to deface the last perfect circle of skin on her back—Curry broke into the bathroom just as Camille was about to “go for [her own] face.” Curry and Eileen immediately helped Camille pack up her things, and then moved her into their home, where they could watch over her—and keep her away from sharp objects.

Now, Camille says, she is learning to be cared for—she is learning to be “parented.” Eileen and Curry are gentle with her—they tuck her into bed each night, cook her meals, and sometimes even run a bath for her or brush her hair. It is now one year to the day that Camille has been back from Wind Gap, and Camille is starting to get better. She still often thinks, however, of the night Amma fell sick with fever. She wonders if she was good at caring for Amma because of kindness, or because she has “Adora’s sickness.” Though Camille wavers back and forth between the two, lately, she has been “leaning towards kindness.”