We Were Liars

58

LOOK.

A fire.

There on the northern tip of Beechwood Island. Where the maple tree stands over the wide lawn.

The house is alight. The flames shoot high, brightening the sky. There is no one here to help.

Far in the distance, I can see the Vineyard firefighters, making their way across the bay in a lighted boat.

Even farther away, the Woods Hole fire boat chugs toward the fire that we set.

Gat, Johnny, Mirren, and me.

We set this fire and it is burning down Clairmont.

Burning down the palace, the palace of the king who had three beautiful daughters.

We set it.

Me, Johnny, Gat, and Mirren.

I remember this now,

in a rush that hits me so hard I fall,

and 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,

And Clairmont is burning.

I AM IN my bed in Windemere, in the early light of dawn.

It is the first day of my last week on the island. I stumble to the window, wrapped in my blanket.

There is New Clairmont. All hard modernity and Japanese garden.

I see it for what it is, now. It is a house built on ashes. Ashes of the life Granddad shared with Gran, ashes of the maple from which the tire swing flew, ashes of the old Victorian house with the porch and the hammock. The new house is built on the grave of all the trophies and symbols of the family: the New Yorker cartoons, the taxidermy, the embroidered pillows, the family portraits.

We burned them all.

On a night when Granddad and the rest had taken boats across the bay,

when the staff was off duty

and we Liars were alone on the island,

the four of us did what we were afraid to do.

We burned not a home, but a symbol.

We burned a symbol to the ground.

59

THE CUDDLEDOWN DOOR is locked. I bang until Johnny appears, wearing the clothes he had on last night. “I’m making pretentious tea,” he says.

“Did you sleep in your clothes?”

“Yes.”

“We set a fire,” I tell him, still standing in the doorway.

They will not lie to me anymore. Go places without me, make decisions without me.

I understand our story now. We are criminals. A band of four.

Johnny looks me in the eyes for a long time but doesn’t say a word. Eventually he turns and goes into the kitchen. I follow. Johnny pours hot water from the kettle into teacups.

“What else do you remember?” he asks.

I hesitate.

I can see the fire. The smoke. How huge Clairmont looked as it burned.

I know, irrevocably and certainly, that we set it.

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

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.

No. Correction.

The glow of his house, burning to the ground.

But these are memories I’ve had all along. I just know where to fit them now.

“Not everything,” I tell Johnny. “I just know we set the fire. I can see the flames.”

He lies down on the floor of the kitchen and stretches his arms over his head.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m fucking tired. If you want to know.” Johnny rolls over on his face and pushes his nose against the tile. “They said they weren’t speaking anymore,” he mumbles into the floor. “They said it was over and they were cutting off from each other.”

“Who?”

“The aunties.”

I lie down on the floor next to him so I can hear what he’s saying.

“The aunties got drunk, night after night,” Johnny mumbles, as if it’s hard to choke the words out. “And angrier, every time. Screaming at each other. Staggering around the lawn. Granddad did nothing but fuel them. We watched them quarrel over Gran’s things and the art that hung in Clairmont—but real estate and money most of all. Granddad was drunk on his own power and my mother wanted me to make a play for the money. Because I was the oldest boy. She pushed me and pushed me—I don’t know. To be the bright young heir. To talk badly of you as the eldest. To be the educated white hope of the future of democracy, some bullshit. She’d lost Granddad’s favor, and she wanted me to get it so she didn’t lose her inheritance.”

As he talks, memories flash across my skull, so hard and bright they hurt. I flinch and put my hands over my eyes.

“Do you remember any more about the fire?” he asks gently. “Is it coming back?”

I close my eyes for a moment and try. “No, not that. But other things.”

Johnny reaches out and takes my hand.

60

SPRING BEFORE SUMMER fifteen, Mummy made me write to Granddad. Nothing blatant. “Thinking of you and your loss today. Hoping you are well.”

I sent actual cards—heavy cream stock with Cadence Sinclair Eastman printed across the top. Dear Granddad, I just rode in a 5K bike ride for cancer research. Tennis team starts up next week. Our book club is reading Brideshead Revisited. Love you.

“Just remind him that you care,” said Mummy. “And that you’re a good person. Well-rounded and a credit to the family.”

I complained. Writing the letters seemed false. Of course I cared. I loved Granddad and I did think about him. But I didn’t want to write these reminders of my excellence every two weeks.

“He’s very impressionable right now,” said Mummy. “He’s suffering. Thinking about the future. You’re the first grandchild.”

“Johnny’s only three weeks younger.”

“That’s my point. Johnny’s a boy and he’s only three weeks younger. So write the letter.”

I did as she asked.

ON BEECHWOOD SUMMER fifteen, the aunties filled in for Gran, making slumps and fussing around Granddad as if he hadn’t been living alone in Boston since Tipper died in October. But they were quarrelsome. They no longer had the glue of Gran keeping them together, and they fought over their memories, her jewelry, the clothes in her closet, her shoes, even. These affairs had not been settled in October. People’s feelings had been too delicate then. It had all been left for the summer. When we got to Beechwood in late June, Bess had already inventoried Gran’s Boston possessions and now began with those in Clairmont. The aunts had copies on their tablets and pulled them up regularly.

“I always loved that jade tree ornament.”

“I’m surprised you remember it. You never helped decorate.”

“Who do you think took the tree down? Every year I wrapped all the ornaments in tissue paper.”

“Martyr.”

“Here are the pearl earrings Mother promised me.”

“The black pearls? She said I could have them.”

The aunts began to blur into one another as the days of the summer ticked past. Argument after argument, old injuries were rehashed and threaded through new ones.

Variations.

“Tell Granddad how much you love the embroidered tablecloths,” Mummy told me.

“I don’t love them.”

“He won’t say no to you.” The two of us were alone in the Windemere kitchen. She was drunk. “You love me, don’t you, Cadence? You’re all I have now. You’re not like Dad.”

“I just don’t care about tablecloths.”

“So lie. Tell him the ones from the Boston house. The cream ones with the embroidery.”

It was easiest to tell her I would.

And later, I told her I had.

But Bess had asked Mirren to do the same thing,

and neither one of us

begged Granddad

for the fucking tablecloths.

61

GAT AND I went night swimming. We lay on the wooden walkway and looked at the stars. We kissed in the attic.

We fell in love.

He gave me a book. With everything, everything.

We didn’t talk about Raquel. I couldn’t ask. He didn’t say.

The twins have their birthday July fourteenth, and there’s always a big meal. All twelve of us were sitting at the long table on the lawn outside Clairmont. Lobsters and potatoes with caviar. Small pots of melted butter. Baby vegetables and basil. Two cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate, waited inside on the kitchen counter.

The littles were getting noisy with their lobsters, poking each other with claws and slurping meat out of the legs. Johnny told stories. Mirren and I laughed. We were surprised when Granddad walked over and wedged himself between Gat and me. “I want to ask your advice on something,” he said. “The advice of youth.”

“We are worldly and awesome youth,” said Johnny, “so you’ve come to the right end of the table.”

“You know,” said Granddad, “I’m not getting any younger, despite my good looks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said.

“Thatcher and I are sorting through my affairs. I’m considering leaving a good portion of my estate to my alma mater.”

“To Harvard? For what, Dad?” asked Mummy, who had walked over to stand behind Mirren.

Granddad smiled. “Probably to fund a student center. They’d put my name on it, out front.” He nudged Gat. “What should they call it, young man, eh? What do you think?”

“Harris Sinclair Hall?” Gat ventured.

“Pah.” Granddad shook his head. “We can do better. Johnny?”

“The Sinclair Center for Socialization,” Johnny said, shoving zucchini into his mouth.

“And snacks,” put in Mirren. “The Sinclair Center for Socialization and Snacks.”

Granddad banged his hand on the table. “I like the ring of it. Not educational, but appreciated by everyone. I’m convinced. I’ll call Thatcher tomorrow. My name will be on every student’s favorite building.”

“You’ll have to die before they build it,” I said.

“True. But won’t you be proud to see my name up there when you’re a student?”

“You’re not dying before we go to college,” said Mirren. “We won’t allow it.”

“Oh, if you insist.” Granddad speared a bit of lobster tail off her plate and ate it.

We were caught up easily, Mirren, Johnny, and I—feeling the power he conferred in picturing us at Harvard, the specialness of asking our opinions and laughing at our jokes. That was how Granddad had always treated us.

“You’re not being funny, Dad,” Mummy snapped. “Drawing the children into it.”

“We’re not children,” I told her. “We understand the conversation.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, “or you wouldn’t be humoring him that way.”

A chill went around the table. Even the littles quieted.

Carrie lived with Ed. The two of them bought art that might or might not be valuable later. Johnny and Will went to private school. Carrie had started a jewelry boutique with her trust and ran it for a number of years until it failed. Ed earned money, and he supported her, but Carrie didn’t have an income of her own. And they weren’t married. He owned their apartment and she didn’t.

Bess was raising four kids on her own. She had some money from her trust, like Mummy and Carrie did, but when she got divorced Brody kept the house. She hadn’t worked since she got married, and before that she’d only been an assistant in the offices of a magazine. Bess was living off the trust money and spending through it.

And Mummy. The dog breeding business doesn’t pay much, and Dad wanted us to sell the Burlington house so he could take half. I knew Mummy was living off her trust.

We.

We were living off her trust.

It wouldn’t last forever.

So when Granddad said he might leave his money to build Harvard a student center and asked our advice, he wasn’t involving the family in his financial plans.

He was making a threat.

62

A FEW EVENINGS later. Clairmont cocktail hour. It began at six or six-thirty, depending on when people wandered up the hill to the big house. The cook was fixing supper and had set out salmon mousse with little floury crackers. I went past her and pulled a bottle of white wine from the fridge for the aunties.

The littles, having been down at the big beach all afternoon, were being forced into showers and fresh clothes by Gat, Johnny, and Mirren at Red Gate, where there was an outdoor shower. Mummy, Bess, and Carrie sat around the Clairmont coffee table.

I brought wineglasses for the aunts as Granddad entered. “So, Penny,” he said, pouring himself bourbon from the decanter on the sideboard, “how are you and Cady doing at Windemere this year, with the change of circumstances? Bess is worried you’re lonely.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Bess.

Carrie narrowed her eyes.

“Yes, you did,” Granddad said to Bess. He motioned for me to sit down. “You talked about the five bedrooms. The renovated kitchen, and how Penny’s alone now and won’t need it.”

“Did you, Bess?” Mummy drew breath.

Bess didn’t reply. She bit her lip and looked out at the view.

“We’re not lonely,” Mummy told Granddad. “We adore Windemere, don’t we, Cady?”

Granddad beamed at me. “You okay there, Cadence?”

I knew what I was supposed to say. “I’m more than okay there, I’m fantastic. I love Windemere because you built it specially for Mummy. I want to raise my own children there and my children’s children. You are so excellent, Granddad. You are the patriarch and I revere you. I am so glad I am a Sinclair. This is the best family in America.”

Not in those words. But I was meant to help Mummy keep the house by telling my grandfather that he was the big man, that he was the cause of all our happiness, and by reminding him that I was the future of the family. The all-American Sinclairs would perpetuate ourselves, tall and white and beautiful and rich, if only he let Mummy and me stay in Windemere.

I was supposed to make Granddad feel in control when his world was spinning because Gran had died. I was to beg him by praising him—never acknowledging the aggression behind his question.

My mother and her sisters were dependent on Granddad and his money. They had the best educations, a thousand chances, a thousand connections, and still they’d ended up unable to support themselves. None of them did anything useful in the world. Nothing necessary. Nothing brave. They were still little girls, trying to get in good with Daddy. He was their bread and butter, their cream and honey, too.

“It’s too big for us,” I told Granddad.

No one spoke as I left the room.

63

MUMMY AND I were silent on the walk back to Windemere after supper. Once the door shut behind us, she turned on me. “Why didn’t you back me with your grandfather? Do you want us to lose this house?”

“We don’t need it.”

“I picked the paint, the tiles. I hung the flag from the porch.”

“It’s five bedrooms.”

“We thought we’d have a bigger family.” Mummy’s face got tight. “But it didn’t work out that way. That doesn’t mean I don’t deserve the house.”

“Mirren and those guys could use the room.”

“This is my house. You can’t expect me to give it up because Bess had too many children and left her husband. You can’t think it’s okay for her to snatch it from me. This is our place, Cadence. We’ve got to look out for ourselves.”

“Can you hear yourself?” I snapped. “You have a trust fund!”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Some people have nothing. We have everything. The only person who used the family money for charity was Gran. Now she’s gone and all anyone’s worried about is her pearls and her ornaments and her real estate. Nobody is trying to use their money for good. Nobody is trying to make the world any better.”

Mummy stood up. “You’re filled with superiority, aren’t you? You think you understand the world so much better than I do. I’ve heard Gat talking. I’ve seen you eating up his words like ice cream off a spoon. But you haven’t paid bills, you haven’t had a family, owned property, seen the world. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and yet you do nothing but pass judgment.”

“You are ripping up this family because you think you deserve the prettiest house.”

Mummy walked to the foot of the stairs. “You go back to Clairmont tomorrow. You tell Granddad how much you love Windemere. Tell him you want to raise your own kids spending summers here. You tell him.”

“No. You should stand up to him. Tell him to stop manipulating all of you. He’s only acting like this because he’s sad about Gran, can’t you tell? Can’t you help him? Or get a job so his money doesn’t matter? Or give the house to Bess?”

“Listen to me, young lady.” Mummy’s voice was steely. “You go and talk to Granddad about Windemere or I will send you to Colorado with your father for the rest of the summer. I’ll do it tomorrow. I swear, I’ll take you to the airport first thing. You won’t see that boyfriend of yours again. Understand?”

She had me there.

She knew about me and Gat. And she could take him away.

Would take him away.

I was in love.

I promised whatever she asked.

When I told Granddad how much I adored the house, he smiled and said he knew someday I’d have beautiful children. Then he said Bess was a grasping wench and he had no intention of giving her my house. But later, Mirren told me he’d promised Windemere to Bess.

“I’ll take care of you,” he’d said. “Just give me a little time to get Penny out.”

64

GAT AND I went out on the tennis court in the twilight a couple nights after I fought with Mummy. We tossed balls for Fatima and Prince Philip in silence.

Finally he said, “Have you noticed Harris never calls me by my name?”

“No.”

“He calls me young man. Like, How was your school year, young man?”

“Why?”

“It’s like, if he called me Gat he’d be really saying, How was your school year, Indian boy whose Indian uncle lives in sin with my pure white daughter? Indian boy I caught kissing my precious Cadence?”

“You believe that’s what he’s thinking?”

“He can’t stomach me,” said Gat. “Not really. He might like me as a person, might even like Ed, but he can’t say my name or look me in the eye.”

It was true. Now that he said it, I could see.

“I’m not saying he wants to be the guy who only likes white people,” Gat went on. “He knows he’s not supposed to be that guy. He’s a Democrat, he voted for Obama—but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable having people of color in his beautiful family.” Gat shook his head. “He’s fake with us. He doesn’t like the idea of Carrie with us. He doesn’t call Ed Ed. He calls him sir. And he makes sure I know I’m an outsider, every chance he gets.” Gat stroked Fatima’s soft doggy ears. “You saw him in the attic. He wants me to stay the hell away from you.”

I hadn’t seen Granddad’s interruption that way. I’d imagined he was embarrassed at walking in on us.

But now, suddenly, I understood what had happened.

Watch yourself, young man, Granddad had said. Your head. You could get hurt.

It was another threat.

“Did you know my uncle proposed to Carrie, back in the fall?” Gat asked. I shook my head.

“They’ve been together almost nine years. He acts as a dad to Johnny and Will. He got down on his knees and proposed, Cady. He had the three of us boys there, and my mom. He’d decorated the apartment with candles and roses. We all dressed in white, and we’d brought this big meal in from this Italian place Carrie loves. He put Mozart on the stereo.

“Johnny and I were all, Ed, what’s the big deal? She lives with you, dude. But the man was nervous. He’d bought a diamond ring. Anyway, she came home, and the four of us left them alone and hid in Will’s room. We were supposed to all rush out with congratulations—but Carrie said no.”

“I thought they didn’t see a point to getting married.”

“Ed sees a point. Carrie doesn’t want to risk her stupid inheritance,” Gat said.

“She didn’t even ask Granddad?”

“That’s the thing,” said Gat. “Everyone’s always asking Harris about everything. Why should a grown woman have to ask her father to approve her wedding?”

“Granddad wouldn’t stop her.”

“No,” said Gat. “But back when Carrie first moved in with Ed, Harris made it clear that all the money earmarked for her would disappear if she married him.

“The point is, Harris doesn’t like Ed’s color. He’s a racist bastard, and so was Tipper. Yes, I like them both for a lot of reasons, and they have been more than generous letting me come here every summer. I’m willing to think that Harris doesn’t even realize why he doesn’t like my uncle, but he dislikes him enough to disinherit his eldest daughter.”

Gat sighed. I loved the curve of his jaw, the hole in his T-shirt, the notes he wrote me, the way his mind worked, the way he moved his hands when he talked. I imagined, then, that I knew him completely.

I leaned in and kissed him. It still seemed so magical that I could do that, and that he would kiss me back. So magical that we showed our weaknesses to one another, our fears and our fragility. “Why didn’t we ever talk about this?” I whispered.

Gat kissed me again. “I love it here,” he said. “The island. Johnny and Mirren. The houses and the sound of the ocean. You.”

“You too.”

“Part of me doesn’t want to ruin it. Doesn’t want to even imagine that it isn’t perfect.”

I understood how he felt.

Or thought I did.

Gat and I went down to the perimeter then, and walked until we got to a wide, flat rock that looked over the harbor. The water crashed against the foot of the island. We held each other and got halfway naked and forgot, for as long as we could, every horrid detail of the beautiful Sinclair family.

65

ONCE UPON A time there was a wealthy merchant who had three beautiful daughters. He spoiled them so much that the younger two girls did little all day but sit before the mirror, gazing at their own beauty and pinching their cheeks to make them red.

One day the merchant had to leave on a journey. “What shall I bring you when I return?” he asked.

The youngest daughter requested gowns of silk and lace.

The middle daughter requested rubies and emeralds.

The eldest daughter requested only a rose.

The merchant was gone several months. For his youngest daughter, he filled a trunk with gowns of many colors. For his middle daughter, he scoured the markets for jewels. But only when he found himself close to home did he remember his promise of a rose for his eldest child.

He came upon a large iron fence that stretched along the road. In the distance was a dark mansion and he was pleased to see a rosebush near the fence bursting with red blooms. Several roses were easily within reach.

It was the work of a minute to cut a flower. The merchant was tucking the blossom into his saddlebag when an angry growl stopped him.

A cloaked figure stood where the merchant was certain no one had been a moment earlier. He was enormous and spoke with a deep rumble. “You take from me with no thought of payment?”

“Who are you?” the merchant asked, quaking.

“Suffice it to say I am one from whom you steal.”

The merchant explained that he had promised his daughter a rose after a long journey.

“You may keep your stolen rose,” said the figure, “but in exchange, give me the first of your possessions you see upon your return.” He then pushed back his hood to reveal the face of a hideous beast, all teeth and snout. A wild boar combined with a jackal.

“You have crossed me,” said the beast. “You will die if you cross me again.”

The merchant rode home as fast as his horse would carry him. He was still a mile away when he saw his eldest daughter waiting for him on the road. “We got word you would arrive this evening!” she cried, rushing into his arms.

She was the first of his possessions he saw upon his return. He now knew what price the beast had truly asked of him.

Then what?

We all know that Beauty grows to love the beast. She grows to love him, despite what her family might think—for his charm and education, his knowledge of art and his sensitive heart.

Indeed, he is a human and always was one. He was never a wild boar/jackal at all. It was only a hideous illusion.

Trouble is, it’s awfully hard to convince her father of that.

Her father sees the jaws and the snout, he hears the hideous growl, whenever Beauty brings her new husband home for a visit. It doesn’t matter how civilized and erudite the husband is. It doesn’t matter how kind.

The father sees a jungle animal, and his repugnance will never leave him.

66

ONE NIGHT, SUMMER fifteen, Gat tossed pebbles at my bedroom window. I put out my head to see him standing among the trees, moonlight glinting off his skin, eyes flashing.

He was waiting for me at the foot of the porch steps. “I have a dire need for chocolate,” he whispered, “so I’m raiding the Clairmont pantry. You coming?”

I nodded and we walked together up the narrow path, our fingers entwined. We stepped around to the side entrance of Clairmont, the one that led to the mudroom filled with tennis racquets and beach towels. With one hand on the screen door, Gat turned and pulled me close.

His warm lips were on mine,

our hands were still together,

there, at the door to the house.

For a moment, the two of us were alone on the planet, with all the vastness of the sky and the future and the past spreading out around us.

We tiptoed through the mudroom and into the large pantry that opened off the kitchen. The room was old-fashioned, with heavy wooden drawers and shelves for holding jams and pickles, back when the house was built. Now it stored cookies, cases of wine, potato chips, root vegetables, seltzer. We left the light off, in case someone came into the kitchen, but we were sure Granddad was the only one sleeping at Clairmont. He was never going to hear anything in the night. He wore a hearing aid by day.

We were rummaging when we heard voices. It was the aunts coming into the kitchen, their speech slurred and hysterical. “This is why people kill each other,” said Bess bitterly. “I should walk out of this room before I do something I regret.”

“You don’t mean that,” said Carrie.

“Don’t tell me what I mean!” shouted Bess. “You have Ed. You don’t need money like I do.”

“You’ve already dug your claws into the Boston house,” said Mummy. “Leave the island alone.”

“Who did the funeral arrangements for Mother?” snapped Bess. “Who stayed by Dad’s side for weeks, who went through the papers, talked to the mourners, wrote the thank-you notes?”

“You live near him,” said Mummy. “You were right there.”

“I was running a household with four kids and holding down a job,” said Bess. “You were doing neither.”

“A part-time job,” said Mummy. “And if I hear you say four kids again, I’ll scream.”

“I was running a household, too,” said Carrie.

“Either of you could have come for a week or two. You left it all to me,” said Bess. “I’m the one who has to deal with Dad all year. I’m the one who runs over when he wants help. I’m the one who deals with his dementia and his grief.”

“Don’t say that,” said Carrie. “You don’t know how often he calls me. You don’t know how much I have to swallow just to be a good daughter to him.”

“So damn straight I want that house,” continued Bess, as if she hadn’t heard. “I’ve earned it. Who drove Mother to her doctor’s appointments? Who sat by her bedside?”

“That’s not fair,” said Mummy. “You know I came down. Carrie came down, too.”

“To visit,” hissed Bess.

“You didn’t have to do that stuff,” said Mummy. “Nobody asked you to.”

“Nobody else was there to do it. You let me do it, and never thanked me. I’m crammed into Cuddledown and it has the worst kitchen. You never even go in there, you’d be surprised how run-down it is. It’s worth almost nothing. Mother fixed up the Windemere kitchen before she died, and the bathrooms at Red Gate, but Cuddledown is just as it ever was—and here you two are, begrudging me compensation for everything I’ve done and continue to do.”

“You agreed to the drawings for Cuddledown,” snapped Carrie. “You wanted the view. You have the only beachfront house, Bess, and you have all Dad’s approval and devotion. I’d think that would be enough for you. Lord knows it’s impossible for the rest of us to get.”

“You choose not to have it,” said Bess. “You choose Ed; you choose to live with him. You choose to bring Gat here every summer, when you know he’s not one of us. You know the way Dad thinks, and you not only keep running around with Ed, you bring his nephew here and parade him around like a defiant little girl with a forbidden toy. Your eyes have been wide open all the time.”

“Shut up about Ed!” cried Carrie. “Just shut up, shut up.”

There was a slap—Carrie hit Bess across the mouth.

Bess left. Slamming doors.

Mummy left, too.

Gat and I sat on the floor of the pantry, holding hands. Trying not to breathe, trying not to move while Carrie put the glasses in the dishwasher.

67

A COUPLE DAYS later, Granddad called Johnny into his Clairmont study. Asked Johnny to do him a favor.

Johnny said no.

Granddad said he would empty Johnny’s college fund if Johnny didn’t do it.

Johnny said he wasn’t interfering in his mother’s love life and he would bloody well work his way through community college, then.

Granddad called Thatcher.

Johnny told Carrie.

Carrie asked Gat to stop coming to supper at Clairmont. “It’s riling Harris up,” she said. “It would be better for all of us if you just made some macaroni at Red Gate, or I can have Johnny bring you a plate. You understand, don’t you? Just until everything gets sorted out.”

Gat did not understand.

Johnny didn’t, either.

All of us Liars stopped coming to meals.

Soon after, Bess told Mirren to push Granddad harder about Windemere. She was to take Bonnie, Liberty, and Taft with her to talk with him in his study. They were the future of this family, Mirren was to say. Johnny and Cady didn’t have the math grades for Harvard, while Mirren did. Mirren was the business-minded one, the heir to all Granddad stood for. Johnny and Cady were too frivolous. And look at these beautiful littles: the pretty blond twins, the freckle-faced Taft. They were Sinclairs, through and through.

Say all that, said Bess. But Mirren would not.

Bess took her phone, her laptop, and her allowance.

Mirren would not.

One evening Mummy asked about me and Gat. “Granddad knows something is going on with you two. He isn’t happy.”

I told her I was in love.

She said don’t be silly. “You’re risking the future,” she said. “Our house. Your education. For what?”

“Love.”

“A summer fling. Leave the boy alone.”

“No.”

“Love doesn’t last, Cady. You know that.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, believe me, it doesn’t.”

“We’re not you and Dad,” I said. “We’re not.”

Mummy crossed her arms. “Grow up, Cadence. See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be.”

I looked at her. My lovely, tall mother with her pretty coil of hair and her hard, bitter mouth. Her veins were never open. Her heart never leapt out to flop helplessly on the lawn. She never melted into puddles. She was normal. Always. At any cost.

“For the health of our family,” she said eventually, “you are to break it off.”

“I won’t.”

“You must. And when you’re done, make sure Granddad knows. Tell him it’s nothing and tell him it never was anything. Tell him he shouldn’t worry about that boy again and then talk to him about Harvard and tennis team and the future you have in front of you. Do you understand me?”

I did not and I would not.

I ran out of the house and into Gat’s arms.

I bled on him and he didn’t mind.

LATE THAT NIGHT, Mirren, Gat, Johnny, and I went down to the toolshed behind Clairmont. We found hammers. There were only two, so Gat carried a wrench and I carried a pair of heavy garden shears.

We collected the ivory goose from Clairmont, the elephants from Windemere, the monkeys from Red Gate, and the toad from Cuddledown. We brought them down to the dock in the dark and smashed them with the hammers and the wrench and the shears until the ivory was nothing but powder.

Gat ducked a bucket into the cold seawater and rinsed the dock clean.

68

WE THOUGHT.

We talked.

What if, we said,

what if

in another universe,

a split reality,

God reached out his finger and

lightning struck the Clairmont house?

What if

God sent it up in flames?

Thus he would punish the greedy, the petty, the prejudiced, the normal, the unkind.

They would repent of their deeds.

And after that, learn to love one another again.

Open their souls. Open their veins. Wipe off their smiles.

Be a family. Stay a family.

It wasn’t religious, the way we thought of it.

And yet it was.

Punishment.

Purification through flames.

Or both.

69

NEXT DAY, LATE July of summer fifteen, there was a lunch at Clairmont. Another lunch like all the other lunches, set out on the big table. More tears.

The voices were so loud that we Liars came up the walkway from Red Gate and stood at the foot of the garden, listening.

“I have to earn your love every day, Dad,” Mummy slurred. “And most days I fail. It’s not fucking fair. Carrie gets the pearls, Bess gets the Boston house, Bess gets Windemere. Carrie has Johnny and you’ll give him Clairmont, I know you will. I’ll be left alone with nothing, nothing, even though Cady’s supposed to be the one. The first, you always said.”

Granddad stood from his seat at the head of the table. “Penelope.”

“I’ll take her away, do you hear me? I’ll take Cady away and you won’t see her again.”

Granddad’s voice boomed across the yard. “This is the United States of America,” he said. “You don’t seem to understand that, Penny, so let me explain. In America, here is how we operate: We work for what we want, and we get ahead. We never take no for answer, and we deserve the rewards of our perseverance. Will, Taft, are you listening?”

The little boys nodded, chins quivering. Granddad continued: “We Sinclairs are a grand, old family. That is something to be proud of. Our traditions and values form the bedrock on which future generations stand. This island is our home, as it was my father’s and my grandfather’s before him. And yet the three of you women, with these divorces, broken homes, this disrespect for tradition, this lack of a work ethic, you have done nothing but disappoint an old man who thought he raised you right.”

“Dad, please,” said Bess.

“Be quiet!” thundered Granddad. “You cannot expect me to accept your disregard for the values of this family and reward you and your children with financial security. You cannot, any of you, expect this. And yet, day after day, I see that you do. I will no longer tolerate it.”

Bess crumpled in tears.

Carrie grabbed Will by the elbow and walked toward the dock.

Mummy threw her wineglass against the side of Clairmont house.

70

“WHAT HAPPENED THEN?” I ask Johnny. We are still lying on the floor of Cuddledown, early in the morning. Summer seventeen.

“You don’t remember?” he says.

“No.”

“People started leaving the island. Carrie took Will to a hotel in Edgartown and asked me and Gat to follow her as soon as we’d packed everything. The staff departed at eight. Your mother went to see that friend of hers on the Vineyard—”

“Alice?”

“Yes, Alice came and got her, but you wouldn’t leave, and finally she had to go without you. Granddad took off for the mainland. And then we decided about the fire.”

“We planned it out,” I say.

“We did. We convinced Bess to take the big boat and all the littles to see a movie on the Vineyard.”

As Johnny talks, the memories form. I fill in details he hasn’t spoken aloud.

“When they left we drank the wine they’d left corked in the fridge,” says Johnny. “Four open bottles. And Gat was so angry—”

“He was right,” I say.

Johnny turns his face and speaks into the floor again. “Because he wasn’t coming back. If my mom married Ed, they’d be cut off. And if my mom left Ed, Gat wouldn’t be connected to our family anymore.”

“Clairmont was like the symbol of everything that was wrong.” It is Mirren’s voice. She came in so quietly I didn’t hear. She is now lying on the floor next to Johnny, holding his other hand.

“The seat of the patriarchy,” says Gat. I didn’t hear him come in, either. He lies down next to me.

“You’re such an ass, Gat,” says Johnny kindly. “You always say patriarchy.”

“It’s what I mean.”

“You sneak it in whenever you can. Patriarchy on toast. Patriarchy in my pants. Patriarchy with a squeeze of lemon.”

“Clairmont seemed like the seat of the patriarchy,” repeats Gat. “And yes, we were stupid drunk, and yes, we thought they’d rip the family apart and I would never come here again. We figured if the house was gone, and the paperwork and data inside it gone, and all the objects they fought about gone, the power would be gone.”

“We could be a family,” says Mirren.

“It was like a purification,” says Gat.

“She remembers we set a fire is all,” says Johnny, his voice suddenly loud.

“And some other things,” I add, sitting up and looking at the Liars in the morning light. “Things are coming back as you’re filling me in.”

“We are telling you all the stuff that happened before we set the fire,” says Johnny, still loud.

“Yes,” says Mirren.

“We set a fire,” I say, in wonder. “We didn’t sob and bleed; we did something instead. Made a change.”

“Kind of,” says Mirren.

“Are you kidding? We burned that fucking palace to the ground.”

71

AFTER THE AUNTIES and Granddad quarreled, I was crying.

Gat was crying, too.

He was going to leave the island and I’d never see him again. He would never see me.

Gat, my Gat.

I had never cried with anyone before. At the same time.

He cried like a man, not like a boy. Not like he was frustrated or hadn’t gotten his way, but like life was bitter. Like his wounds couldn’t be healed.

I wanted to heal them for him.

We ran down to the tiny beach alone. I clung to him and we sat together in the sand, and for once he had nothing to say. No analysis, no questions.

Finally I said something about

what if

what if

we took it into our own hands?

And Gat said,

How?

And I said something about

what if

what if

they could stop fighting?

We have something to save.

And Gat said,

Yes. You and me and Mirren and Johnny, yes, we do.

But of course we can always see each other, the four of us.

Next year we can drive.

There is always the phone.

But here, I said. This.

Yes, here, he said. This.

You and me.

I said something about

what if

what if

we could somehow stop being

the Beautiful Sinclair Family and just be a family?

What if we could stop being

different colors, different backgrounds, and just be in love?

What if we could force everyone to change?

Force them.

You want to play God, Gat said.

I want to take action, I said. There is always the phone, he said.

But what about here? I said. This.

Yes, here, he said. This.

Gat was my love, my first and only. How could I let him go?

He was a person who couldn’t fake a smile but smiled often. He wrapped my wrists in white gauze and believed wounds needed attention. He wrote on his hands and asked me my thoughts. His mind was restless, relentless. He didn’t believe in God anymore and yet he still wished that God would help him.

And now he was mine and I said we should not let our love be threatened.

We should not let the family fall apart.

We should not accept an evil we can change.

We would stand up against it, would we not?

Yes. We should.

We would be heroes, even.

GAT AND I talked to Mirren and Johnny.

Convinced them to take action.

We told each other

over and over: do what you are afraid to do.

We told each other.

Over and over, we said it.

We told each other

we were right.

72

THE PLAN WAS simple. We would find the spare jugs of gas, the ones kept in the shed for the motorboats. There were newspapers and cardboard in the mudroom: we’d build piles of recycling and soak those in gasoline. We’d soak the wood floors as well. Stand back. Light a paper towel roll and throw it. Easy.

We would light every floor, every room, if possible, to make sure Clairmont burned completely. Gat in the basement, me on the ground floor, Johnny on the second, and Mirren on top.

“The fire department arrived really late,” says Mirren.

“Two fire departments,” says Johnny. “Woods Hole and Martha’s Vineyard.”

“We were counting on that,” I say, realizing.

“We planned to call for help,” says Johnny. “Of course someone had to call or it would look like arson. We were going to say we were all down at Cuddledown, watching a movie, and you know how the trees surround it. You can’t see the other houses unless you go on the roof. So it made sense that no one would have called.”

“Those fire departments are mainly volunteers,” says Gat. “No one had a clue. Old wood house. Tinderbox.”

“If the aunts and Granddad suspected us, they’d never prosecute,” adds Johnny. “It was easy to bank on that.”

Of course they wouldn’t prosecute.

No one here is a criminal.

No one is an addict.

No one is a failure.

I feel a thrill at what we have done.

My full name is Cadence Sinclair Eastman, and contrary to the expectations of the beautiful family in which I was raised, I am an arsonist.

A visionary, a heroine, a rebel.

The kind of person who changes history.

A criminal.

But if I am a criminal, am I, then, an addict? Am I, then, a failure?

My mind is playing with twists of meaning as it always does. “We made it happen,” I say.

“Depends on what you think it is,” says Mirren.

“We saved the family. They started over.”

“Aunt Carrie’s wandering the island at night,” says Mirren. “My mother’s scrubbing clean sinks till her hands are raw. Penny watches you sleep and writes down what you eat. They drink a fuckload. They’re getting drunk until the tears roll down their faces.”

“When are you even at New Clairmont to see that?” I say.

“I get up there now and then,” Mirren says. “You think we solved everything, Cady, but I think it was—”

“We’re here,” I persist. “Without that fire, we wouldn’t be here. That’s what I’m saying.”

“Okay.”

“Granddad held so much power,” I say. “And now he doesn’t. We changed an evil we saw in the world.”

I understand so much that wasn’t clear before. My tea is warm, the Liars are beautiful, Cuddledown is beautiful. It doesn’t matter if there are stains on the wall. It doesn’t matter if I have headaches or Mirren is sick. It doesn’t matter if Will has nightmares and Gat hates himself. We have committed the perfect crime.

“Granddad only lacks power because he’s demented,” says Mirren. “He would still torture everybody if he could.”

“I don’t agree with you,” says Gat. “New Clairmont seems like a punishment to me.”

“What?” she asks.

“A self-punishment. He built himself a home that isn’t a home. It’s deliberately uncomfortable.”

“Why would he do that?” I ask.

“Why did you give away all your belongings?” Gat asks.

He is staring at me. They are all staring at me.

“To be charitable,” I answer. “To do some good in the world.”

There is a strange silence.

“I hate clutter,” I say.

No one laughs. I don’t know how this conversation came to be all about me.

None of the Liars speaks for a long time. Then Johnny says, “Don’t push it, Gat,” and Gat says, “I’m glad you remember the fire, Cadence,” and I say, “Yah, well, some of it,” and Mirren says she doesn’t feel well and goes back to bed.

The boys and I lie on the kitchen floor and stare at the ceiling for a while longer, until I realize, with some embarrassment, that they have both fallen asleep.

73

I FIND MY mother on the Windemere porch with the goldens. She is crocheting a scarf of pale blue wool.

“You’re always at Cuddledown,” Mummy complains. “It’s not good to be down there all the time. Carrie went yesterday, looking for something, and she said it was filthy. What have you been doing?”

“Nothing. Sorry about the mess.”

“If it’s really dirty we can’t ask Ginny to clean it. You know that, right? It’s not fair to her. And Bess will have a fit if she sees it.”

I don’t want anyone coming into Cuddledown. I want it just for us. “Don’t worry.” I sit down and pat Bosh on his sweet yellow head. “Listen, Mummy?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you tell the family not to talk to me about the fire?”

She puts down her yarn and looks at me for a long time. “You remember the fire?”

“Last night, it came rushing back. I don’t remember all of it, but yeah. I remember it happened. I remember you all argued. And everyone left the island. I remember I was here with Gat, Mirren, and Johnny.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“What the sky looked like. With the flames. The smell of the smoke.”

If Mummy thinks I am in any way at fault, she will never, ever, ask me. I know she won’t. She doesn’t want to know.

I changed the course of her life. I changed the fate of the family. The Liars and I.

It was a horrible thing to do. Maybe. But it was something. It wasn’t sitting by, complaining. I am a more powerful person than my mother will ever know. I have trespassed against her and helped her, too.

She strokes my hair. So cloying. I pull back. “That’s all?” she asks.

“Why doesn’t anyone talk to me about it?” I repeat.

“Because of your—because of—” Mummy stops, looking for words. “Because of your pain.”

“Because I have headaches, because I can’t remember my accident, I can’t handle the idea that Clairmont burned down?”

“The doctors told me not to add stress to your life,” she says. “They said the fire might have triggered the headaches, whether it was smoke inhalation or—or fear,” she finishes lamely.

“I’m not a child,” I say. “I can be trusted to know basic information about our family. All summer I’ve been working to remember my accident, and what happened right before. Why not tell me, Mummy?”

“I did tell you. Two years ago. I told you over and over, but you never remembered it the next day. And when I talked to the doctor, he said I shouldn’t keep upsetting you that way, shouldn’t keep pushing you.”

“You live with me!” I cry. “Don’t you have any faith in your own judgment over that of some doctor who barely knows me?”

“He’s an expert.”

“What makes you think I’d want my whole extended family keeping secrets from me—even the twins, even Will and Taft, for God’s sake—rather than know what happened? What makes you think I am so fragile I can’t even know simple facts?”

“You seem that fragile to me,” says Mummy. “And to be honest, I haven’t been sure I could handle your reaction.”

“You can’t even imagine how insulting that is.”

“I love you,” she says.

I can’t look at her pitying, self-justifying face any longer.

74

MIRREN IS IN my room when I open the door. She is sitting at my desk with her hand on my laptop.

“I wonder if I could read the emails you sent me last year,” she says. “Do you have them on your computer?”

“Yeah.”

“I never read them,” she says. “At the start of the summer I pretended I did, but I never even opened them.”

“Why not?”

“I just didn’t,” she says. “I thought it didn’t matter, but now I think it does. And look!” She makes her voice light. “I even left the house to do it!”

I swallow as much anger as I can. “I understand not writing back, but why wouldn’t you even read my emails?”

“I know,” Mirren says. “It sucks and I’m a horrible wench. Please, will you let me read them now?”

I open the laptop. Do a search and find all the notes addressed to her.

There are twenty-eight. I read over her shoulder. Most of them are charming, darling emails from a person supposedly without headaches.

Mirren!

Tomorrow I leave for Europe with my cheating father, who is, as you know, also deeply boring. Wish me luck and know that I wish I were spending the summer on Beechwood with you. And Johnny. And even Gat.

I know, I know. I should be over it.

I am over it.

I am.

Off to Marbella to meet attractive Spanish boys, so there.

I wonder if I can make Dad eat the most disgusting foods of every country we visit, as penance for his running off to Colorado.

I bet I can. If he really loves me, he will eat frogs and kidneys and chocolate-covered ants.

/Cadence

THAT’S HOW MOST of them go. But a few of the emails are neither charming nor darling. Those ones are pitiful and true.

Mirren.

Vermont winter. Dark, dark.

Mummy keeps looking at me while I sleep.

My head hurts all the time. I don’t know what to do to make it stop. The pills don’t work. Someone is splitting through the top of my head with an axe, a messy axe that won’t make a clean cut through my skull. Whoever wields it has to hack away at my head, coming down over and over, but not always right in the same place. I have multiple wounds.

I dream sometimes that the person wielding the axe is Granddad.

Other times, the person is me.

Other times, the person is Gat.

Sorry to sound crazy. My hands are shaky as I type this and the screen is too bright.

I want to die, sometimes, my head hurts so much. I keep writing you all my brightest thoughts but I never say the dark ones, even though I think them all the time. So I am saying them now. Even if you do not answer, I will know somebody heard them, and that, at least, is something.

/Cadence

WE READ ALL twenty-eight emails. When she is finished, Mirren kisses me on the cheek. “I can’t even say sorry,” she tells me. “There is not even a Scrabble word for how bad I feel.”

Then she is gone.

75

I BRING MY laptop to the bed and create a document. I take down my graph-paper notes and begin typing those and all my new memories, fast and with a thousand errors. I fill in gaps with guesses where I don’t have actual recall.

The Sinclair Center for Socialization and Snacks.

You won’t see that boyfriend of yours again.

He wants me to stay the hell away from you.

We adore Windemere, don’t we, Cady?

Aunt Carrie, crying in Johnny’s Windbreaker.

Gat throwing balls for the dogs on the tennis court.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

The dogs.

The fucking dogs.

Fatima and Prince Philip.

The goldens died in that fire.

I know it now, and it is my fault. They were such naughty dogs, not like Bosh, Grendel, and Poppy, whom Mummy trained. Fatima and Prince Philip ate starfish on the shore, then vomited them up in the living room. They shook water from their shaggy fur, snarfled people’s picnic lunches, chewed Frisbees into hunks of unusable plastic. They loved tennis balls and would go down to the court and slime any that had been left around. They would not sit when told. They begged at the table.

When the fire caught, the dogs were in one of the guest bedrooms. Granddad often closed them in upstairs while Clairmont was empty, or at night. That way they wouldn’t eat people’s boots or howl at the screen door.

Granddad had shut them up before he left the island.

And we hadn’t thought of them.

I had killed those dogs. It was I who lived with dogs, I who knew where Prince Philip and Fatima slept. The rest of the Liars didn’t think about the goldens—not very much, anyway. Not like I did.

They had burned to death. How could I have forgotten them like that? How could I have been so wrapped up in my own stupid criminal exercise, the thrill of it, my own anger at the aunties and Granddad—

Fatima and Prince Philip, burning. Sniffing at the hot door, breathing in smoke, wagging their tails hopefully, waiting for someone to come and get them, barking.

What a horrible death for those poor, dear, naughty dogs.

76

I RUN OUT of Windemere. It is dark out now, nearly time for supper. My feelings leak out my eyes, crumpling my face, heave through my frame as I imagine the dogs, hoping for a rescue, staring at the door as the smoke billows in.

Where to go? I cannot face the Liars at Cuddledown. Red Gate might have Will or Aunt Carrie. The island is so fucking small, actually, there’s nowhere to go. I am trapped on this island, where I killed those poor, poor dogs.

All my bravado from this morning,

the power,

the perfect crime,

taking down the patriarchy,

the way we Liars saved the summer idyll and made it better,

the way we kept our family together by destroying some part of it—

all that is delusional.

The dogs are dead,

the stupid, lovely dogs,

the dogs I could have saved,

innocent dogs whose faces lit when you snuck them a bit of hamburger

or even said their names;

dogs who loved to go on boats,

who ran free all day on muddy paws.

What kind of person takes action without thinking about who might be locked in an upstairs room, trusting the people who have always kept them safe and loved them?

I am sobbing these strange, silent sobs, standing on the walkway between Windemere and Red Gate. My face is soaked, my chest is contracting. I stumble back home.

Gat is on the steps.

77

HE JUMPS UP when he seems me and wraps his arms around me. I sob into his shoulder and tuck my arms under his jacket and around his waist.

He doesn’t ask what’s wrong until I tell him.

“The dogs,” I say finally. “We killed the dogs.”

He is quiet for a moment. Then, “Yeah.”

I don’t speak again until my body stops shaking.

“Let’s sit down,” Gat says.

We settle on the porch steps. Gat rests his head against mine. “I loved those dogs,” I say.

“We all did.”

“I—” I choke on my words. “I don’t think I should talk about it anymore or I’ll start crying again.”

“All right.”

We sit for a while longer. “Is that everything?” Gat asks.

“What?”

“Everything you were crying about?”

“God forbid there’s more.”

He is silent.

And still silent.

“Oh hell, there is more,” I say, and my chest feels hollow and iced.

“Yeah,” says Gat. “There is more.”

“More that people aren’t telling me. More that Mummy would rather I didn’t remember.”

He takes a moment to think. “I think we’re telling you, but you can’t hear it. You’ve been sick, Cadence.”

“You’re not telling me directly,” I say.

“No.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Penny said it was best. And—well, with all of us being here, I had faith that you’d remember.” He takes his arm off my shoulder and wraps his hands around his knees.

Gat, my Gat.

He is contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I love the lids of his brown eyes, his smooth dark skin, his lower lip that pushes out. His mind. His mind.

I kiss his cheek. “I remember more about us than I used to,” I tell him. “I remember you and me kissing at the door of the mudroom before it all went so wrong. You and me on the tennis court talking about Ed proposing to Carrie. On the perimeter at the flat rock, where no one could see us. And down on the tiny beach, talking about setting the fire.”

He nods.

“But I still don’t remember what went wrong,” I say. “Why we weren’t together when I got hurt. Did we have an argument? Did I do something? Did you go back to Raquel?” I cannot look him in the eyes. “I think I deserve an honest answer, even if whatever’s between us now isn’t going to last.”

Gat’s face crumples and he hides it in his hands. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Just tell me,” I say.

“I can’t stay here with you,” he says. “I have to go back to Cuddledown.”

“Why?”

“I have to,” he says, standing up and walking. Then he stops and turns. “I messed everything up. I’m so sorry, Cady. I am so, so sorry.” He is crying again. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, or made you a tire swing, or given you roses. I shouldn’t have told you how beautiful you are.”

“I wanted you to.”

“I know, but I should have stayed away. It’s fucked up that I did all that. I’m sorry.”

“Come back here,” I say, but when he doesn’t move, I go to him. Put my hands on his neck and my cheek against his. I kiss him hard so he knows I mean it. His mouth is so soft and he’s just the best person I know, the best person I’ve ever known, no matter what bad things have happened between us and no matter what happens after this. “I love you,” I whisper.

He pulls back. “This is what I’m talking about. I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you.”

He turns around and is lost in the dark.

78

THE HOSPITAL ON Martha’s Vineyard. Summer fifteen, after my accident.

I was lying in a bed under blue sheets. You would think hospital sheets would be white, but these were blue. The room was hot. I had an IV in one arm.

Mummy and Granddad were staring down at me. Granddad was holding a box of Edgartown fudge he’d brought as a gift.

It was touching that he remembered I like the Edgartown fudge.

I was listening to music with ear buds in my ears, so I couldn’t hear what the adults were saying. Mummy was crying.

Granddad opened the fudge, broke off a piece, and offered it to me.

The song:

Our youth is wasted

We will not waste it

Remember my name

’Cause we made history

Na na na na, na na na

I LIFTED MY hand to take out the ear buds. The hand I saw was bandaged.

Both my hands were bandaged.

And my feet. I could feel the tape on them, beneath the blue sheets.

My hands and feet were bandaged, because they were burned.

79

ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters.

No, no, wait.

Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods.

Once upon a time there were three billy goats who lived near a bridge.

Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the roads after the war.

Once upon a time there were three little pigs.

Once upon a time there were three brothers.

No, this is it. This is the variation I want.

Once upon a time there were three beautiful children, two boys and a girl. When each baby was born, the parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts.

Bounce, effort, and snark.

Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.

Sugar, curiosity, and rain.

And yet, there was a witch.

There is always a witch.

This witch was the same age as the beautiful children, and as she and they grew, she was jealous of the girl, and jealous of the boys, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening.

The eldest boy was strong and fast, capable and handsome. Though it’s true, he was exceptionally short.

The next boy was studious and open-hearted. Though it’s true, he was an outsider.

And the girl was witty, generous, and ethical. Though it’s true, she felt powerless.

The witch, she was none of these things, for her parents had angered the fairies. No gifts were ever bestowed upon her. She was lonely. Her only strength was her dark and ugly magic.

She confused being spartan with being charitable, and gave away her possessions without truly doing good with them.

She confused being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it.

She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts or making them think.

Her magic was all she had, and she used it to destroy what she most admired. She visited each young person in turn on their tenth birthday, but did not harm them outright. The protection of some kind fairy—the lilac fairy, perhaps—prevented her from doing so.

What she did instead was curse them.

“When you are sixteen,” proclaimed the witch in a rage of jealousy, “when we are all sixteen,” she told these beautiful children, “you shall prick your finger on a spindle—no, you shall strike a match—yes, you will strike a match and die in its flame.”

The parents of the beautiful children were frightened of the curse, and tried, as people will do, to avoid it. They moved themselves and the children far away, to a castle on a windswept island. A castle where there were no matches.

There, surely, they would be safe.

There, surely, the witch would never find them.

But find them she did. And when they were fifteen, these beautiful children, just before their sixteenth birthdays and when their nervous parents were not yet expecting it, the jealous witch brought her toxic, hateful self into their lives in the shape of a blond maiden.

The maiden befriended the beautiful children. She kissed them and took them on boat rides and brought them fudge and told them stories.

Then she gave them a box of matches.

The children were entranced, for at nearly sixteen they had never seen fire.

Go on, strike, said the witch, smiling. Fire is beautiful. Nothing bad will happen.

Go on, she said, the flames will cleanse your souls.

Go on, she said, for you are independent thinkers.

Go on, she said. What is this life we lead, if you do not take action?

And they listened.

They took the matches from her and they struck them. The witch watched their beauty burn,

their bounce,

their intelligence,

their wit,

their open hearts,

their charm,

their dreams for the future.

She watched it all disappear in smoke.