Tully Moves in with the Mularkeys After Her Arrest at a Party

Tully Moves in with the Mularkeys After Her Arrest at a Party is the turning point in which a chain of loss and reckless choices gives way to an unexpected home. After Gran’s death and Cloud’s renewed abandonment, Tully is caught at a party with Kate; when Mrs. Mularkey offers to take her in, Tully’s precarious future changes into a chance to belong. The welcome that follows becomes, in Tully’s memory, the beginning of a new self and the defining experience of her senior year.

Causes and Background

The party comes in the aftermath of Gran’s funeral and Cloud’s latest departure. Tully has been angry since the losses, and the anger seems to replace grief while also keeping fear at bay. She recognizes that going to the party is a bad idea, but cannot turn back: slowing down would let her fear catch up with her, and the plan is already in motion. The girls are getting ready in Cloud’s old bedroom, a setting that ties Tully’s impulsive night to the mother who has left her behind again.

That grief is not abstract. When Kate asks why Tully is angry, Tully names Cloud, Gran, and God, then tells Kate that Gran died while Kate was away. She has waited all week for someone to understand and feel sorry for her. Kate’s response is to hold her while she breaks down in gulping sobs. The comfort does not erase the abandonment or bereavement, but it makes the contrast between Tully’s losses and the support she finds in Kate unmistakable.

The Arrest

At the party, Kate kisses Neal. The moment is interrupted by a warning that the police are coming, and Tully takes Kate’s hand as they flee through the house, up a hill, through scrub brush, and back down toward the trees. Kate is frightened and feels sick; Tully insists that they will not be caught and hurries her into the car. Their escape ends when Tully reverses into something hard. Kate hits her forehead on the dashboard, and Officer Dan appears at the driver’s-side window—the same officer who drove Tully away from Snohomish three years earlier.

Officer Dan recognizes the girls as the Firefly Lane troublemakers and orders both Tully and Kate out of the car. At the station, they are separated before anyone speaks to them. Tully is taken into a room with a bare desk and two chairs, under a bright bulb and amid the stale smell of the station. The arrest therefore does more than end the party: it places Tully alone in an institutional setting just as her remaining sense of security is already strained by grief and Cloud’s refusal to care for her.

The Offer of a Home

The stakes become explicit when Mrs. Mularkey tells Tully that the authorities want to send her to juvenile hall. Tully looks down at her hands, unable to face the disappointment she sees in Mrs. Mularkey, and worries that the foster family will no longer want her. Mrs. Mularkey also understands that Cloud has refused custody. Tully dismisses Kate’s hope that another family might be found, saying that Kate lives in a different world from hers.

Mrs. Mularkey answers by making a concrete offer: she wants Tully to live with the Mularkeys. Tully initially cannot believe it. The conditions—chores, rules, no mischief, and no smoking—make the invitation sound like an actual place in a household rather than an expression of sympathy. When Tully asks whether she can really stay, Mrs. Mularkey touches her jaw and explains that she cannot bear for Tully to return to the life she has endured. The gesture and the practical terms give the offer its force: she is not merely consoling Tully but taking responsibility for her.

Tully responds by handing over the crumpled, half-empty pack of cigarettes in her purse. The small surrender accompanies a much larger release. She cries for Gran, for the foster family, and for Cloud, but the feeling that overtakes her is relief. Mrs. Mularkey pulls her into her arms and welcomes her into the family. Where the police station had separated Tully from Kate, this embrace gives her a place among the Mularkeys.

Consequences and Significance

Tully later remembers the welcome as the beginning of becoming someone new. While living with the loud, loving Mularkeys, she no longer has to keep secrets, lie, or pretend to be someone else; the family does not treat her as unwanted or inadequate. In retrospect, the party and arrest are not simply a route to punishment or foster placement. They precipitate a decision that gives Tully the stable belonging she has repeatedly lacked.

The event’s meaning persists well beyond the immediate rescue from juvenile hall. Tully remembers Mrs. Mularkey’s welcome and the senior year she spent inseparable from Kate as the single best year of her life. The night’s movement—from grief-driven recklessness, to capture and fear, to a home offered without rejection—establishes chosen family as a real answer to abandonment, even though it cannot undo the losses that brought Tully to the Mularkeys in the first place.