We Were Liars

23

IN WOODS HOLE, the port town, Mummy and I let the goldens out of the car and drag our bags down to where Aunt Carrie is standing on the dock.

Carrie gives Mummy a long hug before she helps us load our bags and the dogs into the big motorboat. “You’re more beautiful than ever,” she says. “And thank God you’re here.”

“Oh, quiet,” says Mummy.

“I know you’ve been sick,” Carrie says to me. She is the tallest of my aunts, and the eldest Sinclair daughter. Her sweater is long and cashmere. The lines on the sides of her mouth are deep. She’s wearing some ancient jade jewelry that belonged to Gran.

“Nothing wrong with me that a Percocet and a couple slugs of vodka doesn’t cure,” I say.

Carrie laughs, but Mummy leans in and says, “She’s not taking Percocet. She’s taking a nonaddictive medicine the doctor prescribes.”

It isn’t true. The nonaddictive medicines didn’t work.

“She looks too thin,” says Carrie.

“It’s all the vodka,” I say. “It fills me up.”

“She can’t eat much when she’s hurting,” says Mummy. “The pain makes her nauseated.”

“Bess made that blueberry pie you like,” Aunt Carrie tells me. She gives Mummy another hug.

“You guys are so huggy all of a sudden,” I say. “You never used to be huggy.”

Aunt Carrie hugs me, too. She smells of expensive, lemony perfume. I haven’t seen her in a long time.

The drive out of the harbor is cold and sparkly. I sit at the back of the boat while Mummy stands next to Aunt Carrie behind the wheel. I trail my hand in the water. It sprays the arm of my duffel coat, soaking the canvas.

I will see Gat soon.

Gat, my Gat, who is not my Gat.

The houses. The littles, the aunts, the Liars.

I will hear the sound of seagulls, taste slumps and pie and homemade ice cream. I’ll hear the pong of tennis balls, the bark of goldens, the echo of my breath in a snorkel. We’ll make bonfires that will smell of ashes.

Will I still be at home?

Before long, Beechwood is ahead of us, the familiar outline looming. The first house I see is Windemere with its multitude of peaked roofs. That room on the far right is Mummy’s; there are her pale blue curtains. My own window looks to the inside of the island.

Carrie steers the boat around the tip and I can see Cuddledown there at the lowest point of the land, with its chubby, boxlike structure. A bitty, sandy cove—the tiny beach—is tucked in at the bottom of a long wooden staircase.

The view changes as we circle to the eastern side of the island. I can’t see much of Red Gate among the trees, but I glimpse its red trim. Then the big beach, accessed by another wooden staircase.

Clairmont sits at the highest point, with water views in three directions. I crane my neck to look for its friendly turret—but it isn’t there. The trees that used to shade the big, sloping yard—they’re gone, too. Instead of the Victorian six-bedroom with the wraparound porch and the farmhouse kitchen, instead of the house where Granddad spent every summer since forever, I see a sleek modern building perched on a rocky hill. There’s a Japanese garden on one side, bare rock on the other. The house is glass and iron. Cold.

Carrie cuts the engine down, which makes it easier to talk. “That’s New Clairmont,” she says.

“It was just a shell last year. I never imagined he wouldn’t have a lawn,” says Mummy.

“Wait till you see the inside. The walls are bare, and when we got here yesterday, he had nothing in the fridge but some apples and a wedge of Havarti.”

“Since when does he even like Havarti?” asks Mummy. “Havarti isn’t even a good cheese.”

“He doesn’t know how to shop. Ginny and Lucille, that’s the new cook, only do what he tells them to do. He’s been eating cheese toast. But I made a huge list and they went to the Edgartown market. We have enough for a few days now.”

Mummy shivers. “It’s good we’re here.”

I stare at the new building while the aunts talk. I knew Granddad renovated, of course. He and Mummy talked about the new kitchen when he visited just a few days ago. The fridge and the extra freezer, the warming drawer and spice racks.

I didn’t realize he’d torn the house down. That the lawn was gone. And the trees, especially the huge old maple with the tire swing beneath it. That tree must have been a hundred years old.

A wave surges up, dark blue, leaping from the sea like a whale. It arches over me. The muscles of my neck spasm, my throat catches. I fold beneath the weight of it. The blood rushes to my head. I am drowning.

It all seems so sad, so unbearably sad for a second, to think of the lovely old maple with the swing. We never told the tree how much we loved it. We never gave it a name, never did anything for it. It could have lived so much longer.

I am so, so cold.

“Cadence?” Mummy is leaning over me.

I reach and clutch her hand.

“Be normal now,” she whispers. “Right now.”

“What?”

“Because you are. Because you can be.”

Okay. Okay. It was just a tree.

Just a tree with a tire swing that I loved a lot.

“Don’t cause a scene,” whispers Mummy. “Breathe and sit up.”

I do what she asks as soon as I am able, just as I have always done.

Aunt Carrie provides distraction, speaking brightly. “The new garden is nice, when you get used to it,” she says. “There’s a seating area for cocktail hour. Taft and Will are finding special rocks.”

She turns the boat toward the shore and suddenly I can see my Liars waiting, not on the dock but by the weathered wooden fence that runs along the perimeter path.

Mirren stands with her feet on the lower half of the barrier, waving joyfully, her hair whipping in the wind.

Mirren. She is sugar. She is curiosity and rain.

Johnny jumps up and down, every now and then doing a cartwheel.

Johnny. He is bounce. He is effort and snark.

Gat, my Gat, once upon a time my Gat—he has come out to see me, too. He stands back from the slats of the fence, on the rocky hill that now leads to Clairmont. He’s doing pretend semaphore, waving his arms in ornate patterns as if I’m supposed to understand some kind of secret code. He is contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.

Welcome home, they are saying. Welcome home.

24

THE LIARS DON’T come to the dock when we pull in, and neither do Aunt Bess and Granddad. Instead, it is only the littles: Will and Taft, Liberty and Bonnie.

The boys, both ten, kick one another and wrestle around. Taft runs over and grabs my arm. I pick him up and spin him. He is surprisingly light, like his freckled body is made of bird parts. “You feeling better?” I ask.

“We have ice cream bars in the freezer!” he yells. “Three different kinds!”

“Seriously, Taft. You were a mess on the phone last night.”

“Was not.”

“Were too.”

“Mirren read me a story. Then I went to sleep. No big whup.”

I ruffle his honey hair. “It’s just a house. Lots of houses seem scary at night, but in the morning, they’re friendly again.”

“We’re not staying at Cuddledown anyway,” Taft says. “We moved to New Clairmont with Granddad now.”

“You did?”

“We have to be orderly there and not act like idiots. We took our stuff already. And Will caught three jellyfish at the big beach and also a dead crab. Will you come see them?”

“Sure.”

“He has the crab in his pocket, but the jellies are in a bucket of water,” says Taft, and runs off.

MUMMY AND I walk across the island to Windemere, a short distance on a wooden walkway. The twins help with our suitcases.

Granddad and Aunt Bess are in the kitchen. There are wild-flowers in vases on the counter, and Bess scrubs a clean sink with a Brillo pad while Granddad reads the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

Bess is softer than her sisters, and blonder, but still the same mold. She’s wearing white jeans and a navy blue cotton top with diamond jewelry. She takes off rubber gloves and then kisses Mummy and hugs me too long and too hard, like she is trying to hug some deep and secret message. She smells of bleach and wine.

Granddad stands up but doesn’t cross the room until Bess is done hugging. “Hello there, Mirren,” he says jovially. “Grand to see you.”

“He’s doing that a lot,” Carrie says to me and Mummy. “Calling people Mirren who aren’t Mirren.”

“I know she’s not Mirren,” Granddad says.

The adults talk amongst themselves, and I am left with the twins. They look awkward in Crocs and summer dresses. They must be almost fourteen now. They have Mirren’s strong legs and blue eyes but their faces are pinched.

“Your hair is black,” says Bonnie. “You look like a dead vampire.”

“Bonnie!” Liberty smacks her.

“I mean, that’s redundant because all vampires are dead,” says Bonnie. “But they have the circles under their eyes and the white skin, like you do.”

“Be nice to Cady,” whispers Liberty. “Mom told us.”

“I am being nice,” says Bonnie. “A lot of vampires are extremely sexy. That’s a documented fact.”

“I told you I didn’t want you talking about creepy dead stuff this summer,” says Liberty. “You were bad enough last night.” She turns to me. “Bonnie’s obsessed with dead things. She’s reading books about them all the time and then she can’t sleep. It’s annoying when you share a room.” Liberty says all this without ever looking me in the eye.

“I was talking about Cady’s hair,” says Bonnie.

“You don’t have to tell her she looks dead.”

“It’s okay,” I tell Bonnie. “I don’t actually care what you think, so it’s perfectly okay.”

25

EVERYONE HEADS TO New Clairmont, leaving me and Mummy alone at Windemere to unpack. I ditch my bag and look for the Liars.

Suddenly they are on me like puppies. Mirren grabs me and spins me. Johnny grabs Mirren, Gat grabs Johnny, we are all grabbing each other and jumping. Then we are apart again, going into Cuddledown.

Mirren chatters about how glad she is that Bess and the littles will live with Granddad this summer. He needs somebody with him now. Plus Bess with her obsessive cleaning is impossible to be around. Plus again and even more important, we Liars will have Cuddledown to ourselves. Gat says he is going to make hot tea and hot tea is his new vice. Johnny calls him a pretentious assface. We follow Gat into the kitchen. He puts water on to boil.

It is a whirlwind, all of them talking over each other, arguing happily, exactly like old times. Gat hasn’t quite looked at me, though.

I can’t stop looking at him.

He is so beautiful. So Gat. I know the arc of his lower lip, the strength in his shoulders. The way he half tucks his shirt into his jeans, the way his shoes are worn down at the heel, the way he touches that scar on his eyebrow without realizing he’s doing it.

I am so angry. And so happy to see him.

Probably he has moved on, like any well-adjusted person would. Gat hasn’t spent the last two years in a shell of headache pain and self-pity. He’s been going around with New York City girls in ballet flats, taking them to Chinese food and out to see bands. If he’s not with Raquel, he’s probably got a girl or even three at home.

“Your hair’s new,” Johnny says to me.

“Yeah.”

“You look pretty, though,” says Mirren sweetly.

“She’s so tall,” says Gat, busying himself with boxes of tea, jasmine and English Breakfast and so on. “You didn’t used to be that tall, did you, Cady?”

“It’s called growing,” I say. “Don’t hold me responsible.” Two summers ago, Gat was several inches taller than I. Now we are about even.

“I’m all for growing,” says Gat, his eyes still not on my face. “Just don’t get taller than me.”

Is he flirting?

He is.

“Johnny always lets me be tallest,” Gat goes on. “Never makes an issue of it.”

“Like I have a choice,” groans Johnny.

“She’s still our Cady,” says Mirren loyally. “We probably look different to her, too.”

But they don’t. They look the same. Gat in a worn green T-shirt from two summers ago. His ready smile, his way of leaning forward, his dramatic nose.

Johnny broad-shouldered, in jeans and a pink plaid button-down so old its edges are frayed; nails bitten, hair cropped.

Mirren, like a pre-Raphaelite painting, that square Sinclair chin. Her long, thick hair is piled on top of her head and she’s wearing a bikini top and shorts.

It is reassuring. I love them so.

Will it matter to them, the way I can’t hold on to even basic facts surrounding my accident? I’ve lost so much of what we did together summer fifteen. I wonder if the aunts have been talking about me.

I don’t want them to look at me like I’m sick. Or like my mind isn’t working.

“Tell about college,” says Johnny. He is sitting on the kitchen counter. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere, yet.” This truth I can’t avoid. I am surprised they don’t know it already.

“What?”

“Why?”

“I didn’t graduate. I missed too much school after the accident.”

“Oh, barf!” yells Johnny. “That is horrible. You can’t do summer school?”

“Not and come here. Besides, I’ll do better if I apply with all my coursework done.”

“What are you going to study?” asks Gat.

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“But we want to know,” says Mirren. “We all do.”

“Seriously,” I say. “Something else. How’s your love life, Johnny?”

“Barf again.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“When you’re as handsome as I am, the course never runs smooth,” he quips.

“I have a boyfriend named Drake Loggerhead,” says Mirren. “He’s going to Pomona like I am. We have had sexual intercourse quite a number of times, but always with protection. He brings me yellow roses every week and has nice muscles.”

Johnny spits out his tea. Gat and I laugh.

“Drake Loggerhead?” Johnny asks.

“Yes,” says Mirren. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Johnny shakes his head.

“We’ve been going out five months,” says Mirren. “He’s spending the summer doing Outward Bound, so he’ll have even more muscles when I see him next!”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gat says.

“Just a little,” says Mirren. “But I love him.”

I squeeze her hand. I am happy she has someone to be in love with. “I’m going to ask you about the sexual intercourse later,” I warn her.

“When the boys aren’t here,” she says. “I’ll tell you all.”

We leave our teacups and walk down to the tiny beach. Take our shoes off and wiggle our toes in the sand. There are tiny, sharp shells.

“I’m not going to supper at New Clairmont,” says Mirren decisively. “And no breakfast, either. Not this year.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“I can’t take it,” she says. “The aunts. The littles. Granddad. He’s lost his mind, you know.” I nod.

“It’s too much togetherness. I just want to be happy with you guys, down here,” says Mirren. “I’m not hanging around in that cold new house. Those people are fine without me.”

“Same,” says Johnny.

“Same,” says Gat.

I realize they discussed this idea before I arrived.

26

MIRREN AND JOHNNY go in the water with snorkels and fins. They kick around looking for lobsters. Probably there are only jellyfish and tiny crabs, but even with those slim pickings we have snorkeled at the tiny beach, always.

Gat sits with me on a batik blanket. We watch the others in silence.

I don’t know how to talk to him.

I love him.

He’s been an ass.

I shouldn’t love him. I’m stupid for still loving him. I have to forget about it.

Maybe he still thinks I am pretty. Even with my hair and the hollows beneath my eyes. Maybe.

The muscles of his back shift beneath his T-shirt. The curve of his neck, the soft arch of his ear. A little brown mole on the side of his neck. The moons of his fingernails. I drink him up after so long apart.

“Don’t look at my troll feet,” says Gat suddenly.

“What?”

“They’re hideous. A troll snuck into my room at night, took my normal feet for himself, and left me with his thuggish troll feet.” Gat tucks his feet under a towel so I can’t see them. “Now you know the truth.”

I am relieved we are talking about nothing important. “Wear shoes.”

“I’m not wearing shoes on the beach.” He wiggles his feet out from beneath the towel. They look fine. “I have to act like everything’s okay until I can find that troll. Then I’ll kill him to death and get my normal feet back. Have you got weapons?”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“Um. There’s a fire poker in Windemere.”

“All right. As soon as we see that troll, we’ll kill him to death with your fire poker.”

“If you insist.”

I lie back on the blanket and put my arm over my eyes. We are silent for a moment.

“Trolls are nocturnal,” I add.

“Cady?” Gat whispers.

I turn my face to look in his eyes. “Yeah?”

“I thought I might never see you again.”

“What?” He is so close we could kiss.

“I thought I might never see you again. After everything that happened, then when you weren’t here last summer.”

Why didn’t you write me? I want to say. Why didn’t you call, all this time?

He touches my face. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he says. “I’m so glad I got the chance.”

I don’t know what is between us. I really don’t. He is such an ass.

“Give me your hand,” Gat says.

I am not sure I want to.

But then of course I do want to.

His skin is warm and sandy. We intertwine our fingers and close our eyes against the sun.

We just lie there. Holding hands. He rubs my palm with his thumb like he did two summers ago beneath the stars.

And I melt.

27

MY ROOM AT Windemere is wood-paneled, with cream paint. There’s a green patchwork quilt on the bed. The carpet is one of those rag rugs you see in country inns.

You were here two summers ago, I tell myself. In this room, every night. In this room, every morning.

Presumably you were reading, playing games on the iPad, choosing clothes. What do you remember?

Nothing.

Tasteful botanic prints line the walls of my room, plus some art I made: a watercolor of the maple that used to loom over the Clairmont lawn, and two crayon drawings: one of Granny Tipper and her dogs, Prince Philip and Fatima; the other of my father. I drag the wicker laundry basket from the closet, take down all the pictures, and load them into the basket.

There’s a bookshelf lined with paperbacks, teen books and fantasy I was into reading a few years back. Kids’ stories I read a hundred times. I pull them down and stack them in the hallway.

“You’re giving away the books? You love books,” Mummy says. She’s coming out of her room wearing fresh clothes for supper. Lipstick.

“We can give them to one of the Vineyard libraries,” I say. “Or to Goodwill.”

Mummy bends over and flips through the paperbacks. “We read Charmed Life together, do you remember?”

I nod.

“And this one, too. The Lives of Christopher Chant. That was the year you were eight. You wanted to read everything but you weren’t a good enough reader yet, so I read to you and Gat for hours and hours.”

“What about Johnny and Mirren?”

“They couldn’t sit still,” says Mummy. “Don’t you want to keep these?”

She reaches out and touches my cheek. I pull back. “I want the things to find a better home,” I tell her.

“I was hoping you would feel different when we came back to the island, is all.”

“You got rid of all Dad’s stuff. You bought a new couch, new dishes, new jewelry.”

“Cady.”

“There’s nothing in our whole house that says he ever lived with us, except me. Why are you allowed to erase my father and I’m not allowed to—”

“Erase yourself?” Mummy says.

“Other people might use these,” I snap, pointing at the stacks of books. “People who have actual needs. Don’t you think of doing good in the world?”

At that moment, Poppy, Bosh, and Grendel hurtle upstairs and clog the hallway where we are standing, snarfling our hands, flapping their hairy tails at our knees.

Mummy and I are silent.

Finally she says, “It’s all right for you to moon around at the tiny beach, or whatever you did this afternoon. It’s all right for you to give away your books if you feel that strongly. But I expect you at Clairmont for supper in an hour with a smile on your face for Granddad. No arguments. No excuses. You understand me?”

I nod.

28

A PAD IS left from several summers ago when Gat and I got obsessed with graph paper. We made drawing after drawing on it by filling in the tiny squares with colored pencil to make pixelated portraits.

I find a pen and write down all my memories of summer fifteen.

The s’mores, the swim. The attic, the interruption.

Mirren’s hand, her chipped gold nail polish, holding a jug of gas for the motorboats.

Mummy, her face tight, asking, “The black pearls?”

Johnny’s feet, running down the stairs from Clairmont to the boathouse.

Granddad, holding on to a tree, his face lit by the glow of a bonfire.

And all four of us Liars, laughing so hard we felt dizzy and sick.

I make a separate page for the accident itself. What Mummy’s told me and what I guess. I must have gone swimming on the tiny beach alone. I hit my head on a rock. I must have struggled back to shore. Aunt Bess and Mummy gave me tea. I was diagnosed with hypothermia, respiratory problems, and a brain injury that never showed on the scans.

I tack the pages to the wall above my bed. I add sticky notes with questions.

Why did I go into the water alone at night?

Where were my clothes?

Did I really have a head injury from the swim, or did something else happen? Could someone have hit me earlier? Was I the victim of some crime?

And what happened between me and Gat? Did we argue? Did I wrong him?

Did he stop loving me and go back to Raquel?

I resolve that everything I learn in the next four weeks will go above my Windemere bed. I will sleep beneath the notes and study them every morning.

Maybe a picture will emerge from the pixels.

A WITCH HAS been standing there behind me for some time, waiting for a moment of weakness. She holds an ivory statue of a goose. It is intricately carved. I turn and admire it only for a moment before she swings it with shocking force. It connects, crushing a hole in my forehead. I can feel my bone come loose. The witch swings the statue again and hits above my right ear, smashing my skull. Blow after blow she lands, until tiny flakes of bone litter the bed and mingle with chipped bits of her once-beautiful goose.

I find my pills and turn off the light.

“Cadence?” Mummy calls from the hallway. “Supper is on at New Clairmont.”

I can’t go.

I can’t. I won’t.

Mummy promises coffee to help me stay awake while the drugs are in my system. She says how long it’s been since the aunts have seen me, how the littles are my cousins, too, after all. I have family obligations.

I can only feel the break in my skull and the pain winging through my brain. Everything else is a faded backdrop to that.

Finally she leaves without me.

29

DEEP IN THE night, the house rattles—just the thing Taft was scared of over at Cuddledown. All the houses here do it. They’re old, and the island is buffeted by winds off the sea.

I try to go back to sleep.

No.

I go downstairs and onto the porch. My head feels okay now.

Aunt Carrie is on the walkway, heading away from me in her nightgown and a pair of shearling boots. She looks skinny, with the bones of her chest exposed and her cheekbones hollow.

She turns onto the wooden walkway that leads to Red Gate.

I sit, staring after her. Breathing the night air and listening to the waves. A few minutes later she comes up the path from Cuddledown again.

“Cady,” she says, stopping and crossing her arms over her chest. “You feeling better?”

“Sorry I missed supper,” I say. “I had a headache.”

“There will be suppers every night, all summer.”

“Can’t you sleep?”

“Oh, you know.” Carrie scratches her neck. “I can’t sleep without Ed. Isn’t that silly?”

“No.”

“I start wandering. It’s good exercise. Have you seen Johnny?”

“Not in the middle of the night.”

“He’s up when I’m up, sometimes. Do you see him?”

“You could look if his light is on.”

“Will has such bad nightmares,” Carrie says. “He wakes up screaming and then I can’t go back to sleep.”

I shiver in my sweatshirt. “Do you want a flashlight?” I ask. “There’s one inside the door.”

“Oh, no. I like the dark.”

She trudges once again up the hill.

30

MUMMY IS IN the New Clairmont kitchen with Granddad. I see them through the glass sliding doors.

“You’re up early,” she says when I come in. “Feeling better?”

Granddad is wearing a plaid bathrobe. Mummy is in a sundress decorated with small pink lobsters. She is making espresso. “Do you want scones? The cook made bacon, too. They’re both in the warming drawer.” She walks across the kitchen and lets the dogs into the house. Bosh, Grendel, and Poppy wag their tails and drool. Mummy bends and wipes their paws with a wet cloth, then absentmindedly swipes the floor where their muddy paw prints were. They sit stupidly, sweetly.

“Where’s Fatima?” I ask. “Where’s Prince Philip?”

“They’re gone,” says Mummy.

“What?”

“Be nice to her,” says Granddad. He turns to me. “They passed on a while back.”

“Both of them?”

Granddad nods.

“I’m sorry.” I sit next to him at the table. “Did they suffer?”

“Not for long.”

Mummy brings a plate of raspberry scones and one of bacon to the table. I take a scone and spread butter and honey on it. “She used to be a little blond girl. A Sinclair through and through,” Granddad complains to Mummy.

“We talked about my hair when you came to visit,” I remind him. “I don’t expect you to like it. Grandfathers never like hair dye.”

“You’re the parent. You should make Mirren change her hair back how it was,” Granddad says to my mother. “What happened to the little blond girls who used to run around this place?”

Mummy sighs. “We grew up, Dad,” she says. “We grew up.”

31

GIVEAWAYS: CHILDHOOD ART, botanic prints.

I get my laundry basket from Windemere and head to Cuddledown. Mirren meets me on the porch, skipping around. “It’s so amazing to be on the island!” she says. “I can’t believe I’m here again!”

“You were here last summer.”

“It wasn’t the same. No summer idyll like we used to have. They were doing construction on New Clairmont. Everyone was acting miserable and I kept looking for you but you never came.”

“I told you I was going to Europe.”

“Oh, I know.”

“I wrote you a lot,” I say. It comes out reproachful.

“I hate email!” says Mirren. “I read them all, but you can’t be mad at me for not answering. It feels like homework, typing and staring at the stupid phone or the computer.”

“Did you get the doll I sent you?”

Mirren puts her arms around me. “I missed you so much. You can’t even believe how much.”

“I sent you that Barbie. The one with the long hair we used to fight over.”

“Princess Butterscotch?”

“Yeah.”

“I was crazy about Princess Butterscotch.”

“You hit me with her once.”

“You deserved it!” Mirren jumps around happily. “Is she at Windemere?”

“What? No. I sent her in the mail,” I say. “Over the winter.”

Mirren looks at me, her brows furrowed. “I never got her, Cadence.”

“Someone signed for the package. What did your mom do, shove it in a closet without opening it?”

I’m joking, but Mirren nods. “Maybe. She’s compulsive. Like, she scrubs her hands over and over. Makes Taft and the twins do it, too. Cleans like there’s a special place in heaven for people with spotless kitchen floors. Also she drinks too much.”

“Mummy does, too.”

Mirren nods. “I can’t stand to watch.”

“Did I miss anything at supper last night?”

“I didn’t go.” Mirren heads onto the wooden walkway that leads from Cuddledown to the tiny beach. I follow. “I told you I wasn’t going this summer. Why didn’t you come over here?”

“I got sick.”

“We all know about your migraines,” says Mirren. “The aunts have been talking.”

I flinch. “Don’t feel sorry for me, okay? Not ever. It makes my skin crawl.”

“Didn’t you take your pills last night?”

“They knocked me out.”

We have reached the tiny beach. Both of us go barefoot across the damp sand. Mirren touches the shell of a long-dead crab.

I want to tell her that my memory is hacked, that I have a traumatic brain injury. I want to ask her everything that happened summer fifteen, make her tell me the stories Mummy doesn’t want to talk about or doesn’t know. But there is Mirren, so bright. I don’t want her to feel more pity for me than she already does.

Also, I am still mad about the emails she didn’t answer—and the loss of the stupid Barbie, though I’m sure it’s not her fault.

“Are Johnny and Gat at Red Gate or did they sleep at Cuddledown?” I ask.

“Cuddledown. God, they’re slobs. It’s like living with goblins.”

“Make them move back to Red Gate, then.”

“No way,” laughs Mirren. “And you—no more Windemere, okay? You’ll move in with us?”

I shake my head. “Mummy says no. I asked her this morning.”

“Come on, she has to let you!”

“She’s all over me since I got sick.”

“But that’s nearly two years.”

“Yeah. She watches me sleep. Plus she lectured me about bonding with Granddad and the littles. I have to connect with the family. Put on a smile.”

“That’s such bullshit.” Mirren shows me a handful of tiny purple rocks she’s collected. “Here.”

“No, thanks.” I don’t want anything I don’t need.

“Please take them,” says Mirren. “I remember how you used to always search for purple rocks when we were little.” She holds her hand out to me, palm up. “I want to make up for Princess Butterscotch.” There are tears in her eyes. “And the emails,” she adds. “I want to give you something, Cady.”

“Okay, then,” I say. I cup my hands and let Mirren pour the rocks into my palms. I store them in the front pocket of my hoodie.

“I love you!” she shouts. Then she turns and calls out to the sea. “I love my cousin Cadence Sinclair Eastman!”

“Overdoing it much?” It is Johnny, padding down the steps with bare feet, dressed in old flannel pajamas with a ticking stripe. He’s wearing wraparound sunglasses and white sunblock down his nose like a lifeguard.

Mirren’s face falls, but only momentarily. “I am expressing my feelings, Johnny. That is what being a living, breathing human being is all about. Hello?”

“Okay, living, breathing human being,” he says, biffing her lightly on the shoulder. “But there’s no need to do it so loudly at the crack of dawn. We have the whole summer in front of us.”

She sticks out her bottom lip. “Cady’s only here four weeks.”

“I can’t get ugly with you this early,” says Johnny. “I haven’t had my pretentious tea yet.” He bends and looks in the laundry basket at my feet. “What’s in here?”

“Botanic prints. And some of my old art.”

“How come?” Johnny sits on a rock and I settle next to him.

“I am giving away my things,” I say. “Since September. Remember I sent you the stripy scarf?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I tell about giving the things to people who can use them, finding the right homes for them. I talk about charity and questioning Mummy’s materialism.

I want Johnny and Mirren to understand me. I am not someone to pity, with an unstable mind and weird pain syndromes. I am taking charge of my life. I live according to my principles. I take action and make sacrifices.

“You don’t, I dunno, want to own stuff?” Johnny asks me.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I want stuff all the time,” says Johnny, throwing his arms wide. “A car. Video games. Expensive wool coats. I like watches, they’re so old-school. I want real art for my walls, paintings by famous people I could never own in a million years. Fancy cakes I see in bakery windows. Sweaters, scarves. Wooly items with stripes, generally.”

“Or you could want beautiful drawings you made when you were a kid,” says Mirren, kneeling by the laundry basket. “Sentimental stuff.” She picks up the crayon drawing of Gran with the goldens. “Look, this one is Fatima and this one is Prince Philip.”

“You can tell?”

“Of course. Fatima had that chubby nose and wide face.”

“God, Mirren. You’re such a mushball,” Johnny says.

32

GAT CALLS MY name as I am heading up the walkway to New Clairmont. I turn and he’s running at me, wearing blue pajama pants and no shirt.

Gat. My Gat.

Is he going to be my Gat?

He stops in front of me, breathing hard. His hair sticks up, bedhead. The muscles of his abdomen ripple and he seems much more naked than he would in a swimsuit.

“Johnny said you were down at the tiny beach,” he pants. “I looked for you there first.”

“Did you just wake up?”

He rubs the back of his neck. Looks down at what he’s wearing. “Kind of. I wanted to catch you.”

“How come?”

“Let’s go to the perimeter.”

We head there and walk the way we did as children, Gat in front and me behind. We crest a low hill, then curve back behind the staff building to where the Vineyard harbor comes into view near the boathouse.

Gat turns so suddenly I nearly run into him, and before I can step back his arms are around me. He pulls me to his chest and buries his face in my neck. I wrap my bare arms around his torso, the insides of my wrists against his spine. He is warm.

“I didn’t get to hug you yesterday,” Gat whispers. “Everyone hugged you but me.”

Touching him is familiar and unfamiliar.

We have been here before.

Also we have never been here before.

For a moment,

or for minutes,

for hours, possibly,

I am simply happy, here with Gat’s body beneath my hands. The sound of the waves and his breath in my ear. Glad that he wants to be near me.

“Do you remember when we came down here together?” he asks into my neck. “The time we went out on that flat rock?”

I step away. Because I don’t remember.

I hate my fucking hacked-up mind, how sick I am all the time, how damaged I’ve become. I hate that I’ve lost my looks and failed school and quit sports and am cruel to my mother. I hate how I still want him after two years.

Maybe Gat wants to be with me. Maybe. But more likely he’s just looking for me to tell him he did nothing wrong when he left me two summers ago. He’d like me to tell him I’m not mad. That he’s a great guy.

But how can I forgive him when I don’t even know exactly what he’s done to me?

“No,” I answer. “It must have slipped my mind.”

“We were— You and I, we— It was an important moment.”

“Whatever,” I say. “I don’t remember it. And obviously nothing that happened between us was particularly important in the long run, was it?”

He looks at his hands. “Okay. Sorry. That was extremely suboptimal of me just now. Are you angry?”

“Of course I’m angry,” I say. “Two years of disappearance. Never calling and not writing back and making everything worse by not dealing. Now you’re all, Ooh, I thought I’d never see you again, and holding my hand and Everyone hugs you but me and half-naked perimeter walking. It’s severely suboptimal, Gat. If that’s the word you want to use.”

His face falls. “It sounds awful when you put it that way.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how I see it.”

He rubs his hand on his hair. “I’m handling everything badly,” he says. “What would you say if I asked you to start over?”

“God, Gat.”

“What?”

“Just ask. Don’t ask what I’d say if you did ask.”

“Okay, I’m asking. Can we start over? Please, Cady? Let’s start over after lunch. It’ll be awesome. I’ll make amusing remarks and you’ll laugh. We’ll go troll hunting. We’ll be happy to see each other. You’ll think I’m great, I promise.”

“That’s a big promise.”

“Okay, maybe not great, but at least I won’t be suboptimal.”

“Why say suboptimal? Why not say what you really are? Thoughtless and confusing and manipulative?”

“God.” Gat jumps up and down in agitation. “Cadence! I really need to just start over. This is going from suboptimal down to total crap.” He jumps and kicks his legs out like an angry little boy.

The jumping makes me smile. “Okay,” I tell him. “Start over. After lunch.”

“All right,” he says, and stops jumping. “After lunch.”

We stare at each other for a moment.

“I’m going to run away now,” says Gat. “Don’t take it personally.”

“Okay.”

“It’s better for the starting over if I run. Because walking will just be awkward.”

“I said okay.”

“Okay, then.”

And he runs.

33

I GO TO lunch at New Clairmont an hour later. I know Mummy will not tolerate my absence after I missed supper last night. Granddad gives me a tour of the house while the cook sets out food and the aunts corral the littles.

It’s a sharp place. Shining wood floors, huge windows, everything low to the ground. The halls of Clairmont used to be decorated floor to ceiling with black-and-white family photographs, paintings of dogs, bookshelves, and Granddad’s collection of New Yorker cartoons. New Clairmont’s halls are glass on one side and blank on the other.

Granddad opens the doors to the four guest bedrooms upstairs. All are furnished only with beds and low, wide dressers. The windows have white shades that let some light shine in. There are no patterns on the bedspreads; they are simple, tasteful shades of blue or brown.

The littles’ rooms have some life. Taft has a Bakugan arena on the floor, a soccer ball, books about wizards and orphans. Liberty and Bonnie brought magazines and an MP3 player. They have stacks of Bonnie’s books on ghost hunters, psychics, and dangerous angels. Their dresser is cluttered with makeup and perfume bottles. Tennis racquets in the corner.

Granddad’s bedroom is larger than the others and has the best view. He takes me in and shows me the bathroom, which has handles in the shower. Old-person handles, so he won’t fall down.

“Where are your New Yorker cartoons?” I ask.

“The decorator made decisions.”

“What about the pillows?”

“The what?”

“You had all those pillows. With embroidered dogs.”

He shakes his head. “Did you keep the fish?”

“What, the swordfish and all that?” We walk down the staircase to the ground floor. Granddad moves slowly and I am behind him. “I started over with this house,” he says simply. “That old life is gone.”

He opens the door to his study. It’s as severe as the rest of the house. A laptop sits in the center of a large desk. A large window looks out over the Japanese garden. A chair. A wall of shelves, completely empty.

It feels clean and open, but it isn’t spartan, because everything is opulent.

Granddad is more like Mummy than like me. He’s erased his old life by spending money on a replacement one.

“Where’s the young man?” asks Granddad suddenly. His face takes on a vacant look.

“Johnny?”

He shakes his head. “No, no.”

“Gat?”

“Yes, the young man.” He clutches the desk for a moment, as if feeling faint.

“Granddad, are you okay?”

“Oh, fine.”

“Gat is at Cuddledown with Mirren and Johnny,” I tell him.

“There was a book I promised him.”

“Most of your books aren’t here.”

“Stop telling me what’s not here!” Granddad yells, suddenly forceful.

“You okay?” It is Aunt Carrie, standing in the door of the study.

“I’m all right,” he says.

Carrie gives me a look and takes Granddad’s arm. “Come on. Lunch is ready.”

“Did you get back to sleep?” I ask my aunt as we head toward the kitchen. “Last night, was Johnny up?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.

34

GRANDDAD’S COOK DOES the shopping and preps the meals, but the aunties plan all the menus. Today we have cold roast chicken, tomato-basil salad, Camembert, baguettes, and strawberry lemonade in the dining room. Liberty shows me pictures of cute boys in a magazine. Then she shows me pictures of clothes in another magazine. Bonnie reads a book called Collective Apparitions: Fact and Fiction. Taft and Will want me to take them tubing—drive the small motorboat while they float behind it in an inner tube.

Mummy says I’m not allowed to drive the boat on meds.

Aunt Carrie says that doesn’t matter, because no way is Will going tubing.

Aunt Bess says she agrees, so Taft better not even think about asking her.

Liberty and Bonnie ask if they can go tubing. “You always let Mirren go,” says Liberty. “You know it’s true.”

Will spills his lemonade and soaks a baguette.

Granddad’s lap gets wet.

Taft gets hold of the wet baguette and hits Will with it.

Mummy wipes the mess while Bess runs upstairs to bring Granddad clean trousers. Carrie scolds the boys.

When the meal is over, Taft and Will duck into the living room to avoid helping with the cleanup. They jump like lunatics on Granddad’s new leather couch. I follow.

Will is runty and pink, like Johnny. Hair almost white. Taft is taller and very thin, golden and freckled, with long dark lashes and a mouth full of braces. “So, you two,” I say. “How was last summer?”

“Do you know how to get an ash dragon in DragonVale?” asks Will.

“I know how to get a scorch dragon,” says Taft.

“You can use the scorch dragon to get the ash dragon,” says Will.

Ugh. Ten-year-olds. “Come on. Last summer,” I say. “Tell me. Did you play tennis?”

“Sure,” says Will.

“Did you go swimming?”

“Yeah,” says Taft.

“Did you go boating with Gat and Johnny?”

They both stop jumping. “No.”

“Did Gat say anything about me?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about you ending up in the water and everything,” says Will. “I promised Aunt Penny I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“It’ll make your headaches worse and we have to leave the subject alone.”

Taft nods. “She said if we make your headaches worse she’ll string us up by our toenails and take away the iPads. We’re supposed to act cheerful and not be idiots.”

“This isn’t about my accident,” I say. “This is about the summer when I went to Europe.”

“Cady?” Taft touches my shoulder. “Bonnie saw pills in your bedroom.”

Will backs away and sits on the far arm of the sofa.

“Bonnie went through my stuff?”

“And Liberty.”

“God.”

“You told me you weren’t a drug addict, but you have pills on your dresser.” Taft is petulant.

“Tell them to stay out of my room,” I say.

“If you’re a drug addict,” says Taft, “there is something you need to know.”

“What?”

“Drugs are not your friend.” Taft looks serious. “Drugs are not your friend and also people should be your friends.”

“Oh, my God. Would you just tell me what you did last summer, pipsqueak?”

Will says, “Taft and I want to play Angry Birds. We don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Whatever,” I say. “Go and be free.”

I step onto the porch and watch the boys as they run down the path to Red Gate.

35

ALL THE WINDOWS in Cuddledown are open when I come down after lunch. Gat is putting music on the ancient CD player. My old crayon art is on the refrigerator with magnets: Dad on top, Gran and the goldens on the bottom. My painting is taped to one of the kitchen cupboards. A ladder and a big box of gift wrap stand in the center of the great room.

Mirren pushes an armchair across the floor. “I never liked the way my mother kept this place,” she explains.

I help Gat and Johnny move the furniture around until Mirren is happy. We take down Bess’s landscape watercolors and roll up her rugs. We pillage the littles’ bedrooms for fun objects. When we are done, the great room is decorated with piggy banks and patchwork quilts, stacks of children’s books, a lamp shaped like an owl. Thick sparkling ribbons from the gift-wrap box crisscross the ceiling.

“Won’t Bess be mad you’re redecorating?” I ask.

“I promise you she’s not setting foot in Cuddledown for the rest of the summer. She’s been trying to get out of this place for years.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh,” says Mirren lightly, “you know. Natter natter, least favorite daughter, natter natter, the kitchen is such crap. Why won’t Granddad remodel it? Et cetera.”

“Did she ask him?”

Johnny stares at me oddly. “You don’t remember?”

“Her memory is messed up, Johnny!” yells Mirren. “She doesn’t remember like half our summer fifteen.”

“She doesn’t?” Johnny says. “I thought—”

“No, no, shut up right now,” Mirren barks. “Did you not listen to what I told you?”

“When?” He looks perplexed.

“The other night,” says Mirren. “I told you what Aunt Penny said.”

“Chill,” says Johnny, throwing a pillow at her.

“This is important! How can you not pay attention to this stuff?” Mirren looks like she might cry.

“I’m sorry, all right?” Johnny says. “Gat, did you know about Cadence not remembering, like, most of the summer fifteen?”

“I knew,” he says.

“See?” says Mirren. “Gat was listening.”

My face is hot. I am looking at the floor. No one speaks for a minute. “It’s normal to lose some memory when you hit your head really hard,” I say finally. “Did my mother explain?”

Johnny laughs nervously.

“I’m surprised Mummy told you,” I go on. “She hates talking about it.”

“She said you’re supposed to take it easy and remember things in your own time. All the aunties know,” says Mirren. “Granddad knows. The littles. The staff. Every single person on the island knows but Johnny, apparently.”

“I knew,” says Johnny. “I just didn’t know the whole picture.”

“Don’t be feeble,” says Mirren. “Now is really not the time.”

“It’s okay,” I say to Johnny. “You’re not feeble. You merely had a suboptimal moment. I’m sure you’ll be optimal from now on.”

“I’m always optimal,” says Johnny. “Just not the kind of optimal Mirren wants me to be.”

Gat smiles when I say the word suboptimal and pats my shoulder.

We have started over.

36

WE PLAY TENNIS. Johnny and I win, but not because I’m any good anymore. He’s an excellent athlete, and Mirren is more inclined to hit the ball and then do happy dances, without caring whether it’s returning. Gat keeps laughing at her, which makes him miss.

“How was Europe?” asks Gat as we walk back to Cuddledown.

“My father ate squid ink.”

“What else?” We reach the yard and toss the racquets on the porch. Stretch ourselves out on the grass.

“Honestly, I can’t tell you that much,” I say. “Know what I did while my dad went to the Colosseum?”

“What?”

“I lay with my face pressed into the tile of the hotel bathroom. Stared at the base of the blue Italian toilet.”

“The toilet was blue?” Johnny asks, sitting up.

“Only you would get more excited over a blue toilet than the sights of Rome,” moans Gat.

“Cadence,” says Mirren.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What?”

“You say don’t feel sorry for you, but then you tell a story about the base of the toilet,” she blurts. “It’s seriously pitiful. What are we supposed to say?”

“Also, going to Rome makes us jealous,” says Gat. “None of us has been to Rome.”

“I want to go to Rome!” says Johnny, lying back down. “I want to see the blue Italian toilets so bad!”

“I want to see the Baths of Caracalla,” says Gat. “And eat every flavor of gelato they make.”

“So go,” I say.

“It’s hardly that simple.”

“Okay, but you will go,” I say. “In college or after college.”

Gat sighs. “I’m just saying, you went to Rome.”

“I wish you could have been there,” I tell him.

37

“WERE YOU ON the tennis court?” Mummy asks me. “I heard balls.”

“Just messing around.”

“You haven’t played in so long. That’s wonderful.”

“My serve is off.”

“I’m so happy you’re taking it up again. If you want to hit with me tomorrow, say the word.”

She is delusional. I am not taking up tennis again just because I played one single afternoon, and in no capacity do I ever want to hit with Mummy. She will wear a tennis skirt and praise me and caution me and hover over me until I’m unkind to her. “We’ll see,” I say. “I probably strained my shoulder.”

Supper is outside in the Japanese garden. We watch the eight o’clock sunset, in groups around the small tables. Taft and Will grab pork chops off the platter and eat them with their hands.

“You two are animals,” says Liberty, wrinkling her nose.

“And your point is?” says Taft.

“There’s a thing called a fork,” says Liberty.

“There’s a thing called your face,” says Taft.

Johnny, Gat, and Mirren get to eat at Cuddledown because they aren’t invalids. And their mothers aren’t controlling. Mummy doesn’t even let me sit with the adults. She makes me sit at a separate table with my cousins.

They’re all laughing and sniping at each other, talking with their mouths full. I stop listening to what they are saying. Instead, I look across to Mummy, Carrie, and Bess, clustered around Granddad.

THERE’S A NIGHT I remember now. It must have been about two weeks before my accident. Early July. We were all sitting at the long table on the Clairmont lawn. Citronella candles burned on the porch. The littles had finished their burgers and were doing cartwheels on the grass. The rest of us were eating grilled swordfish with basil sauce. There was a salad of yellow tomatoes and a casserole of zucchini with a crust of Parmesan cheese. Gat pressed his leg against mine under the table. I felt light-headed with happiness.

The aunts toyed with their food, silent and formal with one another beneath the littles’ shouts. Granddad leaned back, folding his hands over his abdomen. “You think I should renovate the Boston house?” he asked.

A silence followed.

“No, Dad.” Bess was the first to speak. “We love that house.”

“You always complain about drafts in the living room,” said Granddad.

Bess looked around at her sisters. “I don’t.”

“You don’t like the décor,” said Granddad.

“That’s true.” Mummy’s voice was critical.

“I think it’s timeless,” said Carrie.

“I could use your advice, you know,” Granddad said to Bess. “Would you come over and look at it carefully? Tell me what you think?”

“I …”

He leaned in. “I could sell it, too, you know.”

We all knew Aunt Bess wanted the Boston house. All the aunts wanted the Boston house. It was a four-million-dollar house, and they grew up in it. But Bess was the only one who lived nearby, and the only one with enough kids to fill the bedrooms.

“Dad,” Carrie said sharply. “You can’t sell it.”

“I can do what I want,” said Granddad, spearing the last tomato on his plate and popping it in his mouth. “You like the house as it is, then, Bess? Or do you want to see it remodeled? No one likes a waffler.”

“I’d love to help with whatever you want to change, Dad.”

“Oh, please,” snapped Mummy. “Only yesterday you were saying how busy you are and now you’re helping remodel the Boston house?”

“He asked for our help,” said Bess.

“He asked for your help. You cutting us out, Dad?” Mummy was drunk.

Granddad laughed. “Penny, relax.”

“I’ll relax when the estate is settled.”

“You’re making us crazy,” Carrie muttered.

“What was that? Don’t mumble.”

“We all love you, Dad,” said Carrie, loudly. “I know it’s been hard this year.”

“If you’re going crazy it’s your own damn choice,” said Granddad. “Pull yourself together. I can’t leave the estate to crazy people.”

LOOK AT THE aunties now, summer seventeen. Here in the Japanese garden of New Clairmont, Mummy has her arm around Bess, who reaches out to slice Carrie a piece of raspberry tart.

It’s a beautiful night, and we are indeed a beautiful family.

I do not know what changed.

38

“TAFT HAS A motto,” I tell Mirren. It is midnight. We Liars are playing Scrabble in the Cuddledown great room.

My knee is touching Gat’s thigh, though I am not sure he notices. The board is nearly full. My brain is tired. I have bad letters.

Mirren rearranges her tiles distractedly. “Taft has what?”

“A motto,” I say. “You know, like Granddad has? No one likes a waffler?”

“Never take a seat in the back of the room,” intones Mirren.

“Never complain, never explain,” says Gat. “That’s from Disraeli, I think.”

“Oh, he loves that one,” says Mirren.

“And don’t take no for an answer,” I add.

“Good lord, Cady!” shouts Johnny. “Will you just build a word and let the rest of us get on with it?”

“Don’t yell at her, Johnny,” says Mirren.

“Sorry,” says Johnny. “Will you pretty please with brown sugar and cinnamon make a fucking Scrabble word?”

My knee is touching Gat’s thigh. I really can’t think. I make a short, lame word.

Johnny plays his tiles.

“Drugs are not your friend,” I announce. “That’s Taft’s motto.”

“Get out,” laughs Mirren. “Where did he come up with that?”

“Maybe he had drug education at school. Plus the twins snooped in my room and told him I had a dresser full of pills, so he wanted to make sure I’m not an addict.”

“God,” said Mirren. “Bonnie and Liberty are disasters. I think they’re kleptomaniacs now.”

“Really?”

“They took my mom’s sleeping pills and also her diamond hoops. I have no idea where they think they’ll wear those earrings where she wouldn’t see them. Also, they are two people and it’s only one pair.”

“Did you call them on it?”

“I tried with Bonnie. But they’re beyond my help,” Mirren says. She rearranges her tiles again. “I like the idea of a motto,” she goes on. “I think an inspirational quote can get you through hard times.”

“Like what?” asks Gat.

Mirren pauses. Then she says: “Be a little kinder than you have to.”

We are all silenced by that. It seems impossible to argue with.

Then Johnny says, “Never eat anything bigger than your ass.”

“You ate something bigger than your ass?” I ask.

He nods, solemn.

“Okay, Gat,” says Mirren. “What’s yours?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Come on.”

“Okay, maybe.” Gat looks down at his fingernails. “Do not accept an evil you can change.”

“I agree with that,” I say. Because I do.

“I don’t,” says Mirren.

“Why not?”

“There’s very little you can change. You need to accept the world as it is.”

“Not true,” says Gat.

“Isn’t it better to be a relaxed, peaceful person?” Mirren asks.

“No.” Gat is decisive. “It is better to fight evil.”

“Don’t eat yellow snow,” says Johnny. “That’s another good motto.”

“Always do what you are afraid to do,” I say. “That’s mine.”

“Oh, please. Who the hell says that?” barks Mirren.

“Emerson,” I answer. “I think.” I reach for a pen and write it on the backs of my hands.

Left: Always do what. Right: you are afraid to do. The handwriting is skewed on the right.

“Emerson is so boring,” says Johnny. He grabs the pen from me and writes on his own left hand: NO YELLOW SNOW. “There,” he says, holding the result up for display. “That should help.”

“Cady, I’m serious. We should not always do what we are afraid to do,” says Mirren heatedly. “We never should.”

“Why not?”

“You could die. You could get hurt. If you are terrified, there’s probably a good reason. You should trust your impulses.”

“So what’s your philosophy, then?” Johnny asks her. “Be a giant chickenhead?”

“Yes,” says Mirren. “That and the kindness thing I said before.”

39

I FOLLOW GAT when he goes upstairs. I chase after him down the long hall, grab his hand and pull his lips to mine.

It is what I am afraid to do, and I do it.

He kisses me back. His fingers twine in mine and I’m dizzy and he’s holding me up and everything is clear and everything is grand, again. Our kiss turns the world to dust. There is only us and nothing else matters.

Then Gat pulls away. “I shouldn’t do this.”

“Why not?” His hand still holds mine.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s—”

“I thought we started over. Isn’t this the starting over?”

“I’m a mess.” Gat steps back and leans against the wall. “This is such a cliché conversation. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Explain.”

A pause. And then: “You don’t know me.”

“Explain,” I say again.

Gat puts his head in his hands. We stand there, both leaning against the wall in the dark. “Okay. Here’s part of it,” he finally whispers. “You’ve never met my mom. You’ve never been to my apartment.”

That’s true. I’ve never seen Gat anywhere but Beechwood.

“You feel like you know me, Cady, but you only know the me who comes here,” he says. “It’s—it’s just not the whole picture. You don’t know my bedroom with the window onto the airshaft, my mom’s curry, the guys from school, the way we celebrate holidays. You only know the me on this island, where everyone’s rich except me and the staff. Where everyone’s white except me, Ginny, and Paulo.”

“Who are Ginny and Paulo?”

Gat hits his fist into his palm. “Ginny is the housekeeper. Paulo is the gardener. You don’t know their names and they’ve worked here summer after summer. That’s part of my point.”

My face heats with shame. “I’m sorry.”

“But do you even want to see the whole picture?” Gat asks. “Could you even understand it?”

“You won’t know unless you try me,” I say. “I haven’t heard from you in forever.”

“You know what I am to your grandfather? What I’ve always been?”

“What?”

“Heathcliff. In Wuthering Heights. Have you read it?”

I shake my head.

“Heathcliff is a gypsy boy taken in and raised by this pristine family, the Earnshaws. Heathcliff falls in love with the girl, Catherine. She loves him, too—but she also thinks he’s dirt, because of his background. And the rest of the family agrees.”

“That’s not how I feel.”

“There’s nothing Heathcliff can ever do to make these Earnshaws think he’s good enough. And he tries. He goes away, educates himself, becomes a gentleman. Still, they think he’s an animal.”

“And?”

“Then, because the book is a tragedy, Heathcliff becomes what they think of him, you know? He becomes a brute. The evil in him comes out.”

“I heard it was a romance.”

Gat shakes his head. “Those people are awful to each other.”

“You’re saying Granddad thinks you’re Heathcliff?”

“I promise you, he does,” says Gat. “A brute beneath a pleasant surface, betraying his kindness in letting me come to his sheltered island every year—I’ve betrayed him by seducing his Catherine, his Cadence. And my penance is to become the monster he always saw in me.”

I am silent.

Gat is silent.

I reach out and touch him. Just the feel of his forearm beneath the thin cotton of his shirt makes me ache to kiss him again.

“You know what’s terrifying?” Gat says, not looking at me.

“What’s terrifying is he’s turned out to be right.”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Oh, yes, he has.”

“Gat, wait.”

But he has gone into his room and shut the door.

I am alone in the dark hallway.

40

ONCE UPON A time, there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. The girls grew up as lovely as the day was long. They made grand marriages, too, but the arrival of the first grandchild brought disappointment. The youngest princess produced a daughter so very, very tiny that her mother took to keeping her in a pocket, where the girl went unnoticed. Eventually, normal-sized grandchildren arrived, and the king and queen forgot the existence of the tiny princess almost completely.

When the too-small princess grew older, she passed most of her days and nights hardly ever leaving her tiny bed. There was very little reason for her to get up, so solitary was she.

One day, she ventured to the palace library and was delighted to find what good company books could be. She began going there often. One morning, as she read, a mouse appeared on the table. He stood upright and wore a small velvet jacket. His whiskers were clean and his fur was brown. “You read just as I do,” he said, “walking back and forth across the pages.” He stepped forward and made a low bow.

The mouse charmed the tiny princess with stories of his adventures. He told her of trolls who steal people’s feet and gods who abandon the poor. He asked questions about the universe and searched continually for answers. He thought wounds needed attention. In turn, the princess told the mouse fairy tales, drew him pixelated portraits, and made him little crayon drawings. She laughed and argued with him. She felt awake for the first time in her life.

It was not long before they loved each other dearly.

When she presented her suitor to her family, however, the princess met with difficulty. “He is only a mouse!” cried the king in disdain, while the queen screamed and ran from the throne room in fear. Indeed, the entire kingdom, from royalty to servants, viewed the mouse suitor with suspicion and discomfort. “He is unnatural,” people said of him. “An animal masquerading as a person.”

The tiny princess did not hesitate. She and the mouse left the palace and traveled far, far away. In a foreign land they were married, made a home for themselves, filled it with books and chocolate, and lived happily ever after.

If you want to live where people are not afraid of mice, you must give up living in palaces.

41

A GIANT WIELDS a rusty saw. He gloats and hums as he works, slicing through my forehead and into the mind behind it.

I have less than four weeks to find out the truth.

Granddad calls me Mirren.

The twins are stealing sleeping pills and diamond earrings.

Mummy argued with the aunts over the Boston house.

Bess hates Cuddledown.

Carrie roams the island at night.

Will has bad dreams.

Gat is Heathcliff.

Gat thinks I do not know him.

And maybe he is right.

I take pills. Drink water. The room is dark.

Mummy stands in the doorway, watching me. I do not speak to her.

I am in bed for two days. Every now and then the sharp pain wanes to an ache. Then, if I am alone, I sit up and write on the cluster of notes above my bed. Questions more than answers.

The morning I feel better, Granddad comes over to Windemere early. He’s wearing white linen pants and a blue sport jacket. I am in shorts and a T-shirt, throwing balls for the dogs in the yard. Mummy is already up at New Clairmont.

“I’m heading to Edgartown,” Granddad says, scratching Bosh’s ears. “You want to come? If you don’t mind an old man’s company.”

“I don’t know,” I joke. “I’m so busy with these spit-covered tennis balls. Could be all day.”

“I’ll take you to the bookstore, Cady. Buy you presents like I used to.”

“How about fudge?”

Granddad laughs. “Sure, fudge.”

“Did Mummy put you up to this?”

“No.” He scratches his tufty white hair. “But Bess doesn’t want me driving the motorboat alone. She says I could get disoriented.”

“I’m not allowed to drive the motorboat, either.”

“I know,” he says, holding up the keys. “But Bess and Penny aren’t boss here. I am.”

We decide to eat breakfast in town. We want to get the boat away from the Beechwood dock before the aunts catch us.

EDGARTOWN IS A nautical, sweetie-pie village on Martha’s Vineyard. It takes twenty minutes to get there. It’s all white picket fences and white wooden homes with flowery yards. Shops sell tourist stuff, ice cream, pricey clothes, antique jewelry. Boats leave from the harbor for fishing trips and scenic cruises.

Granddad seems like his old self. He’s tossing money around. Treats me to espresso and croissants at a little bakery with stools by a window, then tries to buy me books at the Edgartown bookshop. When I refuse the gift, he shakes his head at my giveaway project but doesn’t lecture. Instead he asks for my help picking out presents for the littles and a floral design book for Ginny, the housekeeper. We place a big order at Murdick’s Fudge: chocolate, chocolate walnut, peanut butter, and penuche.

Browsing in one of the art galleries, we run into Granddad’s lawyer, a narrow, graying fellow named Richard Thatcher. “So this is Cadence the first,” says Thatcher, shaking my hand. “I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“He does the estate,” says Granddad, by way of explanation.

“First grandchild,” says Thatcher. “There’s never anything to match that feeling.”

“She’s got a great head on her shoulders, too,” Granddad says. “Sinclair blood through and through.”

This speaking in stock phrases, he has always done it. “Never complain, never explain.” “Don’t take no for an answer.” But it grates when he’s using them about me. A good head on my shoulders? My actual head is fucking broken in countless medically diagnosed ways—and half of me comes from the unfaithful Eastman side of the family. I am not going to college next year; I’ve given up all the sports I used to do and clubs I used to be part of; I’m high on Percocet half the time and I’m not even nice to my little cousins.

Still, Granddad’s face is glowing as he talks about me, and at least today he knows I am not Mirren.

“She looks like you,” says Thatcher.

“Doesn’t she? Except she’s good-looking.”

“Thank you,” I say. “But if you want the full resemblance I have to tuft up my hair.”

This makes Granddad smile. “It’s from the boat,” he says to Thatcher. “Didn’t bring a hat.”

“It’s always tufty,” I tell Thatcher.

“I know,” he says.

The men shake hands and Granddad hooks his arm through mine as we leave the gallery. “He’s taken good care of you,” he tells me.

“Mr. Thatcher?”

He nods. “But don’t tell your mother. She’ll stir up trouble again.”

42

ON THE WAY home, a memory comes.

Summer fifteen, a morning in early July. Granddad was making espresso in the Clairmont kitchen. I was eating jam and baguette toast at the table. It was just the two of us.

“I love that goose,” I said, pointing. A cream goose statue sat on the sideboard.

“It’s been there since you, Johnny, and Mirren were three,” said Granddad. “That’s the year Tipper and I took that trip to China.” He chuckled. “She bought a lot of art there. We had a guide, an art specialist.” He came over to the toaster and popped the piece of bread I had in there for myself.

“Hey!” I objected.

“Shush, I’m the granddad. I can take the toast when I want to.” He sat down with his espresso and spread butter on the baguette. “This art specialist girl took us to antiques shops and helped us navigate the auction houses,” he said. “She spoke four languages. You wouldn’t think to look at her. Little slip of a China girl.”

“Don’t say China girl. Hello?”

He ignored me. “Tipper bought jewelry and had the idea of buying animal sculptures for the houses here.”

“Does that include the toad in Cuddledown?”

“Sure, the ivory toad,” said Granddad. “And we bought two elephants, I know.”

“Those are in Windemere.”

“And monkeys in Red Gate. There were four monkeys.”

“Isn’t ivory illegal?” I asked.

“Oh, some places. But you can get it. Your gran loved ivory. She traveled to China when she was a child.”

“Is it elephant tusks?”

“That or rhino.”

There he was, Granddad. His white hair still thick, the lines on his face deep from all those days on the sailboat. His heavy jaw like an old film star.

You can get it, he said, about the ivory.

One of his mottos: Don’t take no for an answer.

It had always seemed a heroic way to live. He would say it when advising us to pursue our ambitions. When encouraging Johnny to try training for a marathon, or when I failed to win the reading prize in seventh grade. It was something he said when talking about his business strategies, and how he got Gran to marry him. “I asked her four times before she said yes,” he’d always say, retelling one of his favorite Sinclair family legends. “I wore her down. She said yes to shut me up.”

Now, at the breakfast table, watching him eat my toast, “Don’t take no for an answer” seemed like the attitude of a privileged guy who didn’t care who got hurt, so long as his wife had the cute statues she wanted to display in her summer-houses.

I walked over and picked up the goose. “People shouldn’t buy ivory,” I said. “It’s illegal for a reason. Gat was reading the other day about—”

“Don’t tell me what that boy is reading,” snapped Granddad. “I’m informed. I get all the papers.”

“Sorry. But he’s made me think about—”

“Cadence.”

“You could put the statues up for auction and then donate the money to wildlife conservation.”

“Then I wouldn’t have the statues. They were very dear to Tipper.”

“But—”

Granddad barked, “Do not tell me what to do with my money, Cady. That money is not yours.”

“Okay.”

“You are not to tell me how to dispose of what is mine, is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Not ever.”

“Yes, Granddad.”

I had the urge to snatch the goose and fling it across the room.

Would it break when it hit the fireplace? Would it shatter?

I balled my hands into fists.

It was the first time we’d talked about Granny Tipper since her death.

GRANDDAD DOCKS THE boat and ties it up.

“Do you still miss Gran?” I ask him as we head toward New Clairmont. “Because I miss her. We never talk about her.”

“A part of me died,” he says. “And it was the best part.”

“You think so?” I ask.

“That is all there is to say about it,” says Granddad.

43

I FIND THE Liars in the Cuddledown yard. The grass is littered with tennis racquets and drink bottles, food wrappers and beach towels. The three of them lie on cotton blankets, wearing sunglasses and eating potato chips.

“Feeling better?” asks Mirren.

I nod.

“We missed you.”

They have baby oil spread on their bodies. Two bottles of it lie on the grass. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get burned?” I ask.

“I don’t believe in sunblock anymore,” says Johnny.

“He’s decided the scientists are corrupt and the whole sunblock industry is a moneymaking fraud,” says Mirren.

“Have you ever seen sun poisoning?” I ask. “The skin literally bubbles.”

“It’s a dumb idea,” says Mirren. “We’re just bored out of our minds, that’s all.” But she slathers baby oil on her arms as she’s speaking.

I lie down next to Johnny.

I open a bag of barbeque potato chips.

I stare at Gat’s chest.

Mirren reads aloud a bit of a book about Jane Goodall.

We listen to some music off my iPhone, the speaker tinny.

“Why don’t you believe in sunblock again?” I ask Johnny.

“It’s a conspiracy,” he says. “To sell a lot of lotion that nobody needs.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I won’t burn,” he says. “You’ll see.”

“But why are you putting on baby oil?”

“Oh, that’s not part of the experiment,” Johnny says. “I just like to be as greasy as possible at all times.”

GAT CATCHES ME in the kitchen, looking for food. There isn’t much. “Last time I saw you was again suboptimal,” he says. “In the hallway a couple nights ago.”

“Yeah.” My hands are shaking.

“Sorry.”

“All right.”

“Can we start over?”

“We can’t start over every day, Gat.”

“Why not?” He jumps to sit on the counter. “Maybe this is a summer of second chances.”

“Second, sure. But after that it gets ridiculous.”

“So just be normal,” he says, “at least for today. Let’s pretend I’m not a mess, let’s pretend you’re not angry. Let’s act like we’re friends and forget what happened.”

I don’t want to pretend.

I don’t want to be friends.

I don’t want to forget. I am trying to remember.

“Just for a day or two, until things start to seem all right again,” says Gat, seeing my hesitation. “We’ll just hang out until it all stops being such a big deal.”

I want to know everything, understand everything; I want to hold Gat close and run my hands over him and never let him go. But perhaps this is the only way we can start.

Be normal, now. Right now.

Because you are. Because you can be.

“I’ve learned how to do that,” I say.

I hand him the bag of fudge Granddad and I bought in Edgartown, and the way his face lights up at the chocolate tugs at my heart.

44

NEXT DAY MIRREN and I take the small motorboat to Edgartown without permission.

The boys don’t want to come. They are going kayaking.

I drive and Mirren trails her hand in the wake.

Mirren isn’t wearing much: a daisy-print bikini top and a denim miniskirt. She walks down the cobblestone sidewalks of Edgartown talking about Drake Loggerhead and how it feels to have “sexual intercourse” with him. That’s what she calls it every time; her answer about how it feels has to do with the scent of beach roses mixed with roller coasters and fireworks.

She also talks about what clothes she wants to buy for freshman year at Pomona and movies she wants to see and projects she wants to do this summer, like find a place on the Vineyard to ride horses and start making ice cream again. Honestly, she doesn’t stop chattering for half an hour.

I wish I had her life. A boyfriend, plans, college in California. Mirren is going off into her sunshine future, whereas I am going back to Dickinson Academy to another year of snow and suffocation.

I buy a small bag of fudge at Murdick’s, even though there’s some left from yesterday. We sit on a shady bench, Mirren still talking.

Another memory comes.

SUMMER FIFTEEN, MIRREN sat next to Taft and Will on the steps of our favorite Edgartown clam shack. The boys had plastic rainbow pinwheels. Taft’s face was smeared with fudge he’d eaten earlier. We were waiting for Bess, because she had Mirren’s shoes. We couldn’t go indoors without them.

Mirren’s feet were dirty and her toenails painted blue.

We had been waiting a while when Gat came out of the shop down the block. He had a stack of books under his arm. He ran toward us at top speed, as if in a ridiculous hurry to catch us, even though we were sitting still.

Then he stopped short. The book on top was Being and Nothingness by Sartre. He still had the words written on the backs of his hands. A recommendation from Granddad.

Gat bowed, foolishly, clownishly, and presented me with the book at the bottom of the pile: it was a novel by Jaclyn Moriarty. I’d been reading her all summer.

I opened the book to the title page. It was inscribed. For Cady with everything, everything. Gat.

“I REMEMBER WAITING for your shoes so we could go into the clam shack,” I tell Mirren. She has stopped talking now and looks at me expectantly. “Pinwheels,” I say. “Gat giving me a book.”

“So your memories are coming back,” Mirren says. “That’s great!”

“The aunties fought about the estate.”

She shrugs. “A bit.”

“And Granddad and I, we had this argument about his ivory statues.”

“Yeah. We talked about it at the time.”

“Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Why did Gat disappear after my accident?”

Mirren twists a strand of her hair. “I don’t know.”

“Did he go back with Raquel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did we fight? Did I do something wrong?”

“I don’t know, Cady.”

“He got upset at me a few nights back. About not knowing the names of the staff. About not having seen his apartment in New York.”

There is a silence. “He has good reasons to be mad,” says Mirren finally.

“What did I do?”

Mirren sighs. “You can’t fix it.”

“Why not?

Suddenly Mirren starts choking. Gagging, like she might vomit. Bending over at the waist, her skin damp and pale.

“You okay?”

“No.”

“Can I help?”

She doesn’t answer.

I offer her a bottle of water. She takes it. Drinks slowly. “I did too much. I need to get back to Cuddledown. Now.”

Her eyes are glassy. I hold out my hand. Her skin feels wet and she seems unsteady on her feet. We walk in silence to the harbor where the small motorboat is docked.

MUMMY NEVER NOTICED the motorboat was missing, but she sees the bag of fudge when I give it to Taft and Will.

On and on, natter natter. Her lecture isn’t interesting.

I may not leave the island without permission from her.

I may not leave the island without adult supervision.

I may not operate a motor vehicle on medication.

I can’t be as stupid as I’m acting, can I?

I say the “Sorry” my mother wants to hear. Then I run down to Windemere and write everything I remembered—the clam shack, the pinwheel, Mirren’s dirty feet on the wooden steps, the book Gat gave me—on the graph paper above my bed.

45

START OF MY second week on Beechwood, we discover the roof of Cuddledown. It’s easy to climb up there; we just never did it before because it involves going through Aunt Bess’s bedroom window.

The roof is cold as hell in the nighttime, but in the day there’s a great view of the island and the sea beyond it. I can see over the trees that cluster around Cuddledown to New Clairmont and its garden. I can even see into the house, which has floor-to-ceiling windows in many of the ground-floor rooms. You can see a bit of Red Gate, too, and the other direction, across to Windemere, then out to the bay.

That first afternoon we spread out food on an old picnic blanket. We eat Portuguese sweet bread and runny cheeses in small wooden boxes. Berries in green cardboard. Cold bottles of fizzy lemonade.

We resolve to come here every day. All summer. This roof is the best place in the world.

“If I die,” I say as we look at the view, “I mean, when I die, throw my ashes in the water of the tiny beach. Then when you miss me, you can climb up here, look down, and think how awesome I was.”

“Or we could go down and swim in you,” says Johnny. “If we missed you really badly.”

“Ew.”

“You’re the one who wanted to be in the water of the tiny beach.”

“I just meant, I love it here. It’d be a grand place to have my ashes.”

“Yeah,” says Johnny. “It would be.”

Mirren and Gat have been silent, eating chocolate-covered hazelnuts out of a blue ceramic bowl. “This is a bad conversation,” Mirren says.

“It’s okay,” says Johnny.

“I don’t want my ashes here,” says Gat.

“Why not?” I say. “We could all be together in the tiny beach.”

“And the littles will swim in us!” yells Johnny.

“You’re grossing me out,” snaps Mirren.

“It’s not actually that different from all the times I’ve peed in there,” says Johnny.

“Gack.”

“Oh, come on, everyone pees in there.”

“I don’t,” says Mirren.

“Yes, you do,” he says. “If the tiny beach water isn’t made of pee now, after all these years of us peeing in it, a few ashes aren’t going to ruin it.”

“Do you guys ever plan out your funeral?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” Johnny crinkles his nose.

“You know, in Tom Sawyer, when everyone thinks Tom and Huck and what’s-his-name?”

“Joe Harper,” says Gat.

“Yeah, they think Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper are dead. The boys go to their own funeral and hear all the nice memories the townspeople have of them. After I read that, I always thought about my own funeral. Like, what kind of flowers and where I’d want my ashes. And the eulogy, too, saying how I was transcendentally awesome and won the Nobel Prize and the Olympics.”

“What did you win the Olympics for?” asks Gat.

“Maybe handball.”

“Is there handball in the Olympics?”

“Yes.”

“Do you even play handball?”

“Not yet.”

“You better get started.”

“Most people plan their weddings,” says Mirren. “I used to plan my wedding.”

“Guys don’t plan their weddings,” says Johnny.

“If I married Drake I’d have all yellow flowers,” Mirren says. “Yellow flowers everywhere. And a spring yellow dress, like a normal wedding dress only yellow. And he would wear a yellow cummerbund.”

“He would have to love you very, very much to wear a yellow cummerbund,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” says Mirren. “But Drake would do it.”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t want at my funeral,” says Johnny. “I don’t want a bunch of New York art-world types who don’t even know me standing around in a stupid-ass reception room.”

“I don’t want religious people talking about a God I don’t believe in,” says Gat.

“Or a bunch of fake girls acting all sad and then putting lip gloss on in the bathroom and fixing their hair,” says Mirren.

“God,” I quip, “you make it sound like funerals aren’t any fun.”

“Seriously, Cady,” says Mirren. “You should plan your wedding, not your funeral. Don’t be morbid.”

“What if I never get married? What if I don’t want to get married?”

“Plan your book party, then. Or your art opening.”

“She’s winning the Olympics and the Nobel Prize,” says Gat. “She can plan parties for those.”

“Okay, fine,” I say. “Let’s plan my Olympic handball party. If it’ll make you happy.”

So we do. Chocolate handballs wrapped in blue fondant. A gold dress for me. Champagne flutes with tiny gold balls inside. We discuss whether people wear weird goggles for handball like they do for racquetball and decide that for purposes of our party, they do. All the guests will wear gold handball goggles for the duration.

“Do you play on a handball team?” asks Gat. “I mean, will there be a whole crew of Amazonian handball goddesses there, celebrating victory with you? Or did you win it by your lonesome?”

“I have no idea.”

“You really have to start educating yourself about this,” says Gat. “Or you’re never going to win the gold. We’ll have to rethink the whole party if you only get the silver.”

LIFE FEELS BEAUTIFUL that day.

The four of us Liars, we have always been.

We always will be.

No matter what happens as we go to college, grow old, build lives for ourselves; no matter if Gat and I are together or not. No matter where we go, we will always be able to line up on the roof of Cuddledown and gaze at the sea.

This island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.

46

DAYS THAT FOLLOW are darker. Rarely do the Liars want to go anywhere. Mirren has a sore throat and body aches. She stays mainly in Cuddledown. She paints pictures to hang in the hallways and makes rows of shells along the edges of the countertops. Dishes pile in the sink and on the coffee table. DVDs and books are in messy stacks all over the great room. The beds lie unmade and the bathrooms have a damp, mildewy smell.

Johnny eats cheese with his fingers and watches British TV comedies. One day he collects a row of old tea bags, soggy ones, and tosses them into a mug filled with orange juice.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Biggest splash gets the most points.”

“But why?”

“My mind works in mysterious ways,” says Johnny. “I find underhand is generally the best technique.”

I help him figure out a point system. Five points for a sprinkle, ten for a puddle, twenty for a decorative pattern on the wall behind the mug.

We go through a whole bottle of fresh-squeezed juice. When he’s done, Johnny leaves the mug and the mangled, leaking tea bags where they lie.

I don’t clean up, either.

Gat has a list of the hundred greatest novels ever written, and he’s pushing his way through whatever he’s been able to find on the island. He marks them with sticky notes and reads passages aloud. Invisible Man. A Passage to India. The Magnificent Ambersons. I only half pay attention when he reads, because Gat has not kissed me or reached out to me since we agreed to act normal.

I think he avoids being alone with me.

I avoid being alone with him, too, because my whole body sings to be near him, because every movement he makes is charged with electricity. I often think of putting my arms around him or running my fingers along his lips. When I let my thoughts go there—if for a moment Johnny and Mirren are out of sight, if for even a second we are alone—the sharp pain of unrequited love invites the migraine in.

These days she is a gnarled crone, touching the raw flesh of my brain with her cruel fingernails. She pokes my exposed nerves, exploring whether she’ll take up residence in my skull. If she gets in, I’m confined to my bedroom for a day or maybe two.

We eat lunch on the roof most days.

I suppose they do it when I’m ill, too.

Every now and then a bottle rolls off the roof and the glass smashes. In fact, there are shards and shards of splintered glass, sticky with lemonade, all over the porch.

Flies buzz around, attracted by the sugar.

47

END OF THE second week, I find Johnny alone in the yard, building a structure out of Lego pieces he must have found at Red Gate.

I’ve got pickles, cheese straws, and leftover grilled tuna from the New Clairmont kitchen. We decide not to go on the roof since it’s just the two of us. We open the containers and line them up on the edge of the dirty porch. Johnny talks about how he wants to build Hogwarts out of Lego. Or a Death Star. Or, wait! Even better is a Lego tuna fish to hang in New Clairmont now that none of Granddad’s taxidermy is there anymore. That’s it. Too bad there’s not enough Lego on this stupid island for a visionary project such as his.

“Why didn’t you call or email after my accident?” I ask. I hadn’t planned to bring it up. The words spring out.

“Oh, Cady.”

I feel stupid asking, but I want to know.

“You don’t want to talk about Lego tuna fish instead?” Johnny vamps.

“I thought maybe you were annoyed with me about those emails. The ones I sent asking about Gat.”

“No, no.” Johnny wipes his hands on his T-shirt. “I disappeared because I’m an asshole. Because I don’t think through my choices and I’ve seen too many action movies and I’m kind of a follower.”

“Really? I don’t think that about you.”

“It’s an undeniable fact.”

“You weren’t mad?”

“I was just a stupid fuck. But not mad. Never mad. I’m sorry, Cadence.”

“Thanks.”

He picks up a handful of Legos and starts fitting them together.

“Why did Gat disappear? Do you know?”

Johnny sighs. “That’s another question.”

“He told me I don’t know the real him.”

“Could be true.”

“He doesn’t want to discuss my accident. Or what happened with us that summer. He wants us to act normal and like nothing happened.”

Johnny’s lined his Legos up in stripes: blue, white, and green. “Gat had been shitty to that girl Raquel, by starting up with you. He knew it wasn’t right and he hated himself for that.”

“Okay.”

“He didn’t want to be that kind of guy. He wants to be a good person. And he was really angry that summer, about all kinds of things. When he wasn’t there for you, he hated himself even more.”

“You think?”

“I’m guessing,” says Johnny.

“Is he going out with anyone?”

“Aw, Cady,” says Johnny. “He’s a pretentious ass. I love him like a brother, but you’re too good for him. Go find yourself a nice Vermont guy with muscles like Drake Loggerhead.” Then he cracks up laughing.

“You’re useless.”

“I can’t deny it,” he answers. “But you’ve got to stop being such a mushball.”

48

GIVEAWAY: Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones.

It’s one of the Chrestomanci stories Mummy read to me and Gat the year we were eight. I’ve reread it several times since then, but I doubt Gat has.

I open the book and write on the title page. For Gat with everything, everything. Cady.

I head to Cuddledown early the next morning, stepping over old teacups and DVDs. I knock on Gat’s bedroom door.

No answer.

I knock again, then push it open.

It used to be Taft’s room. It’s full of bears and model boats, plus Gat-like piles of books, empty bags of potato chips, cashews crushed underfoot. Half-full bottles of juice and soda, CDs, the Scrabble box with most of its tiles spilled across the floor. It’s as bad as the rest of the house, if not worse.

Anyway, he’s not there. He must be at the beach.

I leave the book on his pillow.

49

THAT NIGHT, GAT and I find ourselves alone on the roof of Cuddledown. Mirren felt sick and Johnny took her downstairs for some tea.

Voices and music float from New Clairmont, where the aunts and Granddad are eating blueberry pie and drinking port. The littles are watching a movie in the living room.

Gat walks the slant of the roof, all the way down to the gutter and up again. It seems dangerous, so easy to fall—but he is fearless.

Now is when I can talk to him.

Now is when we can stop pretending to be normal.

I am looking for the right words, the best way to start.

Suddenly he climbs back to where I’m sitting in three big steps. “You are very, very beautiful, Cady,” he says.

“It’s the moonlight. Makes all the girls look pretty.”

“I think you’re beautiful always and forever.” He is silhouetted against the moon. “Have you got a boyfriend in Vermont?”

Of course I don’t. I have never had a boyfriend except for him. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” I say. “We’re very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”

“God.” Gat is annoyed. Stands and walks back down to the edge of the roof.

“Joking.”

Gat’s back is to me. “You say we shouldn’t feel sorry for you—”

“Yes.”

“—but then you come out with these statements. My boyfriend is named Percocet. Or, I stared at the base of the blue Italian toilet. And it’s clear you want everyone to feel sorry for you. And we would, I would, but you have no idea how lucky you are.”

My face flushes.

He is right.

I do want people to feel sorry for me. I do.

And then I don’t.

I do.

And then I don’t.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Harris sent you to Europe for eight weeks. You think he’ll ever send Johnny or Mirren? No. And he wouldn’t send me, no matter what. Just think before you complain about stuff other people would love to have.”

I flinch. “Granddad sent me to Europe?”

“Come on,” says Gat, bitter. “Did you really think your father paid for that trip?”

I know immediately that he is telling the truth.

Of course Dad didn’t pay for the trip. There’s no way he could have. College professors don’t fly first-class and stay in five-star hotels.

So used to summers on Beechwood, to endlessly stocked pantries and multiple motorboats and a staff quietly grilling steaks and washing linens—I didn’t even think about where that money might be coming from.

Granddad sent me to Europe. Why?

Why wouldn’t Mummy go with me, if the trip was a gift from Granddad? And why would Dad even take that money from my grandfather?

“You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Gat says. “It—it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.”

Gat, my Gat.

He is right. He is.

But he also doesn’t understand.

“I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.”

“Okay, then.”

“But listen. You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” I say—and I realize tears are running down my face, though I’m not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.”

“You do not,” he says harshly. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.”

“I just want the pain to be over,” I say. “On the days the pills don’t work. I want it to end and I would do anything—really, anything—if I knew for sure it would end the pain.”

There is a silence. He walks down to the bottom edge of the roof, facing away from me. “What do you do then? When it’s like that?”

“Nothing. I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet another day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.”

“Another day.”

“Yes.”

Now he turns and bounds up the roof in a couple steps. Suddenly his arms are around me, and we are clinging to each other.

He is shivering slightly and he kisses my neck with cold lips. We stay like that, enfolded in each other’s arms, for a minute or two,

and it feels like the universe is reorganizing itself,

and I know any anger we felt has disappeared.

Gat kisses me on the lips, and touches my cheek.

I love him.

I have always loved him.

We stay up there on the roof for a very, very long time. Forever.

50

MIRREN HAS BEEN getting ill more and more often. She gets up late, paints her nails, lies in the sun, and stares at pictures of African landscapes in a big coffee-table book. But she won’t snorkel. Won’t sail. Won’t play tennis or go to Edgartown.

I bring her jelly beans from New Clairmont. Mirren loves jelly beans.

Today, she and I lie out on the tiny beach. We read magazines I stole from the twins and eat baby carrots. Mirren has headphones on. She keeps listening to the same song over and over on my iPhone.

Our youth is wasted

We will not waste it

Remember my name

’Cause we made history

Na na na na, na na na

I POKE MIRREN with a carrot.

“What?”

“You have to stop singing or I can’t be responsible for my actions.”

Mirren turns to me, serious. Pulls out the ear buds. “Can I tell you something, Cady?”

“Sure.”

“About you and Gat. I heard you two come downstairs last night.”

“So?”

“I think you should leave him alone.”

“What?”

“It’s going to end badly and mess everything up.”

“I love him,” I say. “You know I’ve always loved him.”

“You’re making things hard for him. Harder than they already are. You’re going to hurt him.”

“That’s not true. He’ll probably hurt me.”

“Well, that could happen, too. It’s not a good idea for you guys to be together.”

“Don’t you see I would rather be hurt by Gat than be closed off from him?” I say, sitting up. “I’d a million times rather live and risk and have it all end badly than stay in the box I’ve been in for the past two years. It’s a tiny box, Mirren. Me and Mummy. Me and my pills. Me and my pain. I don’t want to live there anymore.”

A silence hangs in the air.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” Mirren blurts.

I look into her eyes. There are tears. “What about Drake Loggerwood? What about the yellow roses and the sexual intercourse?” I ask.

She looks down. “I lied.”

“Why?”

“You know how, when you come to Beechwood, it’s a different world? You don’t have to be who you are back home. You can be somebody better, maybe.”

I nod.

“That first day you came back I noticed Gat. He looked at you like you were the brightest planet in the galaxy.”

“He did?”

“I want someone to look at me that way so much, Cady. So much. And I didn’t mean to, but I found myself lying. I’m sorry.”

I don’t know what to say. I take a deep breath.

Mirren snaps. “Don’t gasp. Okay? It’s fine. It’s fine if I never have a boyfriend at all. It’s fine if not one person ever loves me, all right? It’s perfectly tolerable.”

Mummy’s voice calls from somewhere by New Clairmont. “Cadence! Can you hear me?”

I yell back. “What do you want?”

“The cook is off today. I’m starting lunch. Come slice tomatoes.”

“In a minute.” I sigh and look at Mirren. “I have to go.”

She doesn’t answer. I pull my hoodie on and trudge up the path to New Clairmont.

In the kitchen, Mummy hands me a special tomato knife and starts to talk.

Natter natter, you’re always on the tiny beach.

Natter natter, you should play with the littles.

Granddad won’t be here forever.

Do you know you have a sunburn?

I slice and slice, a basketful of strangely shaped heirloom tomatoes. They are yellow, green, and smoky red.

51

MY THIRD WEEK on-island is ticking by and a migraine takes me out for two days. Or maybe three. I can’t even tell. The pills in my bottle are getting low, though I filled my prescription before we left home.

I wonder if Mummy is taking them. Maybe she has always been taking them.

Or maybe the twins have been coming in my room again, lifting things they don’t need. Maybe they’re users.

Or maybe I am taking more than I know. Popping extra in a haze of pain. Forgetting my last dose.

I am scared to tell Mummy I need more.

When I feel stable I come to Cuddledown again. The sun hovers low in the sky. The porch is covered with broken bottles. Inside, the ribbons have fallen from the ceiling and lie twisted on the floor. The dishes in the sink are dry and encrusted. The quilts that cover the dining table are dirty. The coffee table is stained with circular marks from mugs of tea.

I find the Liars clustered in Mirren’s bedroom, all looking at the Bible.

“Scrabble word argument,” says Mirren as soon as I enter. She closes the book. “Gat was right, as usual. You’re always effing right, Gat. Girls don’t like that in a guy, you know.”

The Scrabble tiles are scattered across the great room floor. I saw them when I walked in.

They haven’t been playing.

“What did you guys do the past few days?” I ask.

“Oh, God,” says Johnny, stretching out on Mirren’s bed. “I forget already.”

“It was Fourth of July,” says Mirren. “We went to supper at New Clairmont and then everyone went out in the big motorboat to see the Vineyard fireworks.”

“Today we went to the Nantucket doughnut shop,” says Gat.

They never go anywhere. Ever. Never see anyone. Now while I’ve been sick, they went everywhere, saw everyone?

“Downyflake,” I say. “That’s the name of the doughnut shop.”

“Yeah. They were the most amazing doughnuts,” says Johnny.

“You hate cake doughnuts.”

“Of course,” says Mirren. “But we didn’t get the cake, we got glazed twists.”

“And Boston cream,” says Gat.

“And jelly,” says Johnny.

But I know Downyflake only makes cake doughnuts. No glazed. No Boston cream. No jelly.

Why are they lying?

52

I EAT SUPPER with Mummy and the littles at New Clairmont, but that night I am hit with a migraine again. It’s worse than the one before. I lie in my darkened room. Scavenger birds peck at the oozing matter that leaks from my crushed skull.

I open my eyes and Gat stands over me. I see him through a haze. Light shines through the curtains, so it must be day.

Gat never comes to Windemere. But here he is. Looking at the graph paper on my wall. At the sticky notes. At the new memories and information I’ve added since I’ve been here, notes about Gran’s dogs dying, Granddad and the ivory goose, Gat giving me the Moriarty book, the aunts fighting about the Boston house.

“Don’t read my papers,” I moan. “Don’t.”

He steps back. “It’s up there for anyone to see. Sorry.”

I turn on my side to press my cheek against the hot pillow.

“I didn’t know you were collecting stories.” Gat sits on the bed. Reaches out and takes my hand.

“I’m trying to remember what happened that nobody wants to talk about,” I say. “Including you.”

“I want to talk about it.”

“You do?”

He is staring at the floor. “I had a girlfriend, two summers ago.”

“I know. I knew all along.”

“But I never told you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I fell for you so hard, Cady. There was no stopping it. I know I should have told you everything and I should have broken it off with Raquel right away. It was just—she was back home, and I never see you all year, and my phone didn’t work here, and I kept getting packages from her. And letters. All summer.”

I look at him.

“I was a coward,” Gat says.

“Yeah.”

“It was cruel. To you and to her, too.”

My face burns with remembered jealousy.

“I am sorry, Cady,” Gat goes on. “That’s what I should have said to you the first day we got here this year. I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

I nod. It is nice to hear him say that. I wish I weren’t so high.

“Half the time I hate myself for all the things I’ve done,” says Gat. “But the thing that makes me really messed up is the contradiction: when I’m not hating myself, I feel righteous and victimized. Like the world is so unfair.”

“Why do you hate yourself?”

And before I know it, Gat is lying on the bed next to me. His cold fingers wrap around my hot ones, and his face is close to mine. He kisses me. “Because I want things I can’t have,” he whispers.

But he has me. Doesn’t he know he already has me?

Or is Gat talking about something else, something else he can’t have? Some material thing, some dream of something?

I am sweaty and my head hurts and I can’t think clearly. “Mirren says it’ll end badly and I should leave you alone,” I tell him.

He kisses me again.

“Someone did something to me that is too awful to remember,” I whisper.

“I love you,” he says.

We hold each other and kiss for a long time.

The pain in my head fades, a little. But not all the way.

I OPEN MY eyes and the clock reads midnight.

Gat is gone.

I pull the shades and look out the window, lifting the sash to get some air.

Aunt Carrie is walking in her nightgown again. Passing by Windemere, scratching her too-thin arms in the moonlight. She doesn’t even have her shearling boots on this time.

Over at Red Gate I can hear Will crying from a nightmare. “Mommy! Mommy, I need you!”

But Carrie either doesn’t hear him, or else she will not go. She veers away and heads up the path toward New Clairmont.

53

GIVEAWAY: A PLASTIC box of Legos.

I’ve given away all my books now. I gave a few to the littles, one to Gat, and went with Aunt Bess to donate the rest to a charity shop on the Vineyard.

This morning I rummage through the attic. There’s a box of Legos there, so I bring them to Johnny. I find him alone in the Cuddledown great room, hurling bits of Play-Doh at the wall and watching the colors stain the white paint.

He sees the Legos and shakes his head.

“For your tuna fish,” I explain. “Now you’ll have enough.”

“I’m not gonna build it,” he says.

“Why not?”

“Too much work,” he says. “Give them to Will.”

“Don’t you have Will’s Legos down here?”

“I brought them back. Little guy was starved for them,” Johnny says. “He’ll be happy to have more.”

I bring them to Will at lunch. There are little Lego people and lots of parts for building cars.

He is ridiculously happy. He and Taft build cars all through the meal. They don’t even eat.

54

THAT SAME AFTERNOON, the Liars get the kayaks out. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“Going round the point to this place we know,” says Johnny. “We’ve done it before.”

“Cady shouldn’t come,” says Mirren.

“Why not?” asks Johnny.

“Because of her head!” shouts Mirren. “What if she hurts her head again, and her migraines get even worse? God, do you even have a brain, Johnny?”

“Why are you yelling?” yells Johnny. “Don’t be so bossy.”

Why don’t they want me to come?

“You can come, Cadence,” says Gat. “It’s fine if she comes.” I don’t want to tag along when I’m not wanted—but Gat pats the kayak seat in front of him and I climb in.

I do not really want to be separate from them.

Ever.

We paddle the two-person kayaks around the bay side under Windemere to an inlet. Mummy’s house sits on an overhang. Beneath it is a cluster of craggy rocks that almost feels like a cave. We pull the kayaks onto the rocks and climb to where it’s dry and cool.

Mirren is seasick, though we were only in the kayaks for a few minutes. She is sick so often now, it’s no surprise. She lies down with her arms over her face. I half expect the boys to unpack a picnic—they have a canvas bag with them—but instead Gat and Johnny begin climbing the rocks. They’ve done it before, I can tell. They’re barefoot, and they climb to a high point twenty-five feet above the water, stopping on a ledge that hangs over the sea.

I watch them until they are settled. “What are you doing?”

“We are being very, very manly,” Johnny calls back. His voice echoes.

Gat laughs.

“No, really,” I say.

“You might think we are city boys, but truth is, we are full of masculinity and testosterone.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Oh, please. I’m coming up with you.”

“No, don’t!” says Mirren.

“Johnny baited me,” I say. “Now I have to.” I begin climbing in the same direction the boys went. The rocks are cold under my hands, slicker than I expected.

“Don’t,” Mirren repeats. “This is why I didn’t want you to come.”

“Why did you come, then?” I ask. “Are you going up there?”

“I jumped last time,” Mirren admits. “Once was enough.”

“They’re jumping?” It doesn’t even look possible.

“Stop, Cady. It’s dangerous,” says Gat.

And before I can climb farther, Johnny holds his nose and jumps. He plummets feetfirst from the high rock.

I scream.

He hits the water with force and the sea is filled with rocks here. There’s no telling how deep or shallow it is. He could seriously die doing this. He could—but he pops up, shaking the water off his short yellow hair and whooping.

“You’re crazy!” I scold.

Then Gat jumps. Whereas Johnny kicked and hollered as he went down, Gat is silent, legs together. He slices into the icy water with hardly a splash. He comes up happy, squeezing water out of his T-shirt as he climbs back onto the dry rocks.

“They’re idiots,” says Mirren.

I look up at the rocks from which they jumped. It seems impossible anyone could survive.

And suddenly, I want to do it. I start climbing again.

“Don’t, Cady,” says Gat. “Please don’t.”

“You just did,” I say. “And you said it was fine if I came.”

Mirren sits up, her face pale. “I want to go home now,” she says urgently. “I don’t feel well.”

“Please don’t, Cady, it’s rocky,” calls Johnny. “We shouldn’t have brought you.”

“I’m not an invalid,” I say. “I know how to swim.”

“That’s not it, it’s—it’s not a good idea.”

“Why is it a good idea for you and not a good idea for me?” I snap. I am nearly at the top. My fingertips are already beginning to blister with clutching the rock. Adrenaline shoots through my bloodstream.

“We were being stupid,” says Gat.

“Showing off,” says Johnny.

“Come down, please.” Mirren is crying now.

I do not come down. I am sitting, knees to my chest, on the ledge from which the boys jumped. I look at the sea churning beneath me. Dark shapes lurk beneath the surface of the water, but I can also see an open space. If I position my jump right, I will hit deep water.

“Always do what you are afraid to do!” I call out.

“That’s a stupid-ass motto,” says Mirren. “I told you that before.”

I will prove myself strong, when they think I am sick.

I will prove myself brave, when they think I am weak.

It’s windy on this high rock. Mirren is sobbing. Gat and Johnny are shouting at me.

I close my eyes and jump.

The shock of the water is electric. Thrilling. My leg scrapes a rock, my left leg. I plunge down,

down to rocky rocky bottom, and

I can see the base of Beechwood Island and

my arms and legs feel numb but my fingers are cold. Slices

of seaweed go past as I fall.

And then I am up again, and breathing.

I’m okay,

my head is okay,

no one needs to cry for me or worry about me.

I am fine,

I am alive.

I swim to shore.

SOMETIMES I WONDER if reality splits. In Charmed Life, that book I gave Gat, there are parallel universes in which different events have happened to the same people. An alternate choice has been made, or an accident has turned out differently. Everyone has duplicates of themselves in these other worlds. Different selves with different lives, different luck. Variations.

I wonder, for example, if there’s a variation of today where I die going off that cliff. I have a funeral where my ashes are scattered at the tiny beach. A million flowering peonies surround my drowned body as people sob in penance and misery. I am a beautiful corpse.

I wonder if there’s another variation in which Johnny is hurt, his legs and back crushed against the rocks. We can’t call emergency services and we have to paddle back in the kayak with his nerves severed. By the time we helicopter him to the hospital on the mainland, he’s never going to walk again.

Or another variation, in which I don’t go with the Liars in the kayaks at all. I let them push me away. They keep going places without me and telling me small lies. We grow apart, bit by bit, and eventually our summer idyll is ruined forever.

It seems to me more than likely that these variations exist.

55

THAT NIGHT I wake, cold. I’ve kicked my blankets off and the window is open. I sit up too fast and my head spins.

A memory.

Aunt Carrie, crying. Bent over with snot running down her face, not even bothering to wipe it off. She’s doubled over, she’s shaking, she might throw up. It’s dark out, and she’s wearing a white cotton blouse with a wind jacket over it—Johnny’s blue-checked one.

Why is she wearing Johnny’s wind jacket?

Why is she so sad?

I get up and find a sweatshirt and shoes. I grab a flashlight and head to Cuddledown. The great room is empty and lit by moonlight. Bottles litter the kitchen counter. Someone left a sliced apple out and it’s browning. I can smell it.

Mirren is here. I didn’t see her before. She’s tucked beneath a striped afghan, leaning against the couch.

“You’re up,” she whispers.

“I came looking for you.”

“How come?”

“I had this memory. Aunt Carrie was crying. She was wearing Johnny’s coat. Do you remember Carrie crying?”

“Sometimes.”

“But summer fifteen, when she had that short haircut?”

“No,” says Mirren.

“How come you’re not asleep?” I ask.

Mirren shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

I sit down. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“I need you to tell me what happened before my accident. And after. You always say nothing important—but something must have happened to me besides hitting my head during a nighttime swim.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“Penny said the doctors want it left alone. You’ll remember in your own time and no one should push it on you.”

“But I am asking, Mirren. I need to know.”

She puts her head down on her knees. Thinking. “What is your best guess?” she finally says.

“I—I suppose I was the victim of something.” It is hard to say these words. “I suppose that I was raped or attacked or some godforsaken something. That’s the kind of thing that makes people have amnesia, isn’t it?”

Mirren rubs her lips. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she says.

“Tell me what happened,” I say.

“It was a messed-up summer.”

“How so?”

“That’s all I can say, my darling Cady.”

“Why won’t you ever leave Cuddledown?” I ask suddenly.

“You hardly ever leave except to go to the tiny beach.”

“I went kayaking today,” she says.

“But you got sick. Do you have that fear?” I ask. “That fear of going out? Agoraphobia?”

“I don’t feel well, Cady,” says Mirren, defensive. “I am cold all the time, I can’t stop shivering. My throat is raw. If you felt this way, you wouldn’t go out, either.”

I feel worse than that all the time, but for once I don’t mention my headaches. “We should tell Bess, then. Take you to the doctor.”

Mirren shakes her head. “It’s just a stupid cold I can’t shake. I’m being a baby about it. Will you get me a ginger ale?”

I cannot argue anymore. I get her a ginger ale and we turn on the television.

56

IN THE MORNING, there is a tire swing hanging from the tree on the lawn of Windemere. The same way one used to hang from the huge old maple in front of Clairmont.

It is perfect.

Just like the one Granny Tipper spun me on. Dad.

Granddad.

Mummy.

Like the one Gat and I kissed on in the middle of the night.

I remember now, summer fifteen, Johnny, Mirren, Gat, and I squashed into that Clairmont swing together. We were much too big to fit. We elbowed each other and rearranged ourselves. We giggled and complained. Accused each other of having big asses. Accused each other of being smelly and rearranged again.

Finally we got settled. Then we couldn’t spin. We were jammed so hard into the swing, there was no way to get moving. We yelled and yelled for a push. The twins walked by and refused to help. Finally, Taft and Will came out of Clairmont and did our bidding. Grunting, they pushed us in a wide circle. Our weight was such that after they let us go, we spun faster and faster, laughing so hard we felt dizzy and sick.

All four of us Liars. I remember that now.

THIS NEW SWING looks strong. The knots are tied carefully.

Inside the tire is an envelope.

Gat’s handwriting: For Cady.

I open the envelope.

More than a dozen dried beach roses spill out.

57

ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. He gave them whatever their hearts desired, and when they grew of age their marriages were celebrated with grand festivities. When the youngest daughter gave birth to a baby girl, the king and queen were overjoyed. Soon afterward, the middle daughter gave birth to a girl of her own, and the celebrations were repeated.

Last, the eldest daughter gave birth to twin boys—but alas, all was not as one might hope. One of the twins was human, a bouncing baby boy; the other was no more than a mouseling.

There was no celebration. No announcements were made.

The eldest daughter was consumed with shame. One of her children was nothing but an animal. He would never sparkle, sunburnt and blessed, the way members of the royal family were expected to do.

The children grew, and the mouseling as well. He was clever and always kept his whiskers clean. He was smarter and more curious than his brother or his cousins.

Still, he disgusted the king and he disgusted the queen. As soon as she was able, his mother set the mouseling on his feet, gave him a small satchel in which she had placed a blueberry and some nuts, and sent him off to see the world.

Set out he did, for the mouseling had seen enough of courtly life to know that should he stay home he would always be a dirty secret, a source of humiliation to his mother and anyone who knew of him.

He did not even look back at the castle that had been his home.

There, he would never even have a name.

Now, he was free to go forth and make a name for himself in the wide, wide world.

And maybe,

just maybe,

he’d come back one day,

and burn that

fucking

palace

to the ground.