We Were Liars

80

HERE IS THE truth about the Beautiful Sinclair Family. At least, the truth as Granddad knows it. The truth he was careful to keep out of all newspapers.

One night, two summers ago, on a warm July evening,

Gatwick Matthew Patil,

Mirren Sinclair Sheffield,

and

Jonathan Sinclair Dennis

perished in a house fire thought to be caused by a jug of motorboat fuel that overturned in the mudroom. The house in question burned to the ground before the neighboring fire departments arrived on the scene.

Cadence Sinclair Eastman was present on the island at the time of the fire but did not notice it until it was well under way. The conflagration prevented her from entering the building when she realized there were people and animals trapped inside. She sustained burns to the hands and feet in her rescue attempts. Then she ran to another home on the island and telephoned the fire department.

When help finally arrived, Miss Eastman was found on the tiny beach, half underwater and curled into a ball. She was unable to answer questions about what happened and appeared to have suffered a head injury. She had to be heavily sedated for many days following the accident.

Harris Sinclair, owner of the island, declined any formal investigation of the fire’s origin. Many of the surrounding trees were decimated.

Funerals were held for

Gatwick Matthew Patil,

Mirren Sinclair Sheffield,

and

Jonathan Sinclair Dennis

in their hometowns of Cambridge and New York City.

Cadence Sinclair Eastman was not well enough to attend.

The following summer, the Sinclair family returned to Beechwood Island. They fell apart. They mourned. They drank a lot.

Then they built a new house on the ashes of the old.

Cadence Sinclair Eastman had no memory of the events surrounding the fire, no memory of it ever happening. Her burns healed quickly but she exhibited selective amnesia regarding the events of the previous summer. She persisted in believing she had injured her head while swimming. Doctors presumed her crippling migraine headaches were caused by unacknowledged grief and guilt. She was heavily medicated and extremely fragile both physically and mentally.

These same doctors advised Cadence’s mother to stop explaining the tragedy if Cadence could not recall it herself. It was too much to be told of the trauma fresh each day. Let her remember in her own time. She should not return to Beechwood Island until she’d had significant time to heal. In fact, any measures possible should be taken to keep her from the island in the year immediately after the accident.

Cadence displayed a disquieting desire to rid herself of all unnecessary possessions, even things of sentimental value, almost as if doing penance for past crimes. She darkened her hair and took to dressing very simply. Her mother sought professional advice about Cadence’s behavior and was advised that it appeared a normal part of the grieving process.

In the second year after the accident, the family began to recover. Cadence was once again attending school after many long absences. Eventually, the girl expressed a desire to return to Beechwood Island. The doctors and other family members agreed: it might be good for her to do just that.

On the island, perhaps, she would finish healing.

81

REMEMBER, DON’T GET your feet wet. Or your clothes.

Soak the linen cupboards, the towels, the floors, the books, and the beds.

Remember, move the gas can away from your kindling so you can grab it.

See it catch, see it burn. Then run. Use the kitchen stairwell and exit out the mudroom door.

Remember, take your gas can with you and return it to the boathouse.

See you at Cuddledown. We’ll put our clothes in the washer there, change, then go and watch the blaze before we call the fire departments.

Those are the last words I said to any of them. Johnny and Mirren went to the top two floors of Clairmont carrying cans of gas and bags of old newspapers for kindling.

I kissed Gat before he went down to the basement. “See you in a better world,” he said to me, and I laughed.

We were a bit drunk. We’d been at the aunties’ leftover wine since they left the island. The alcohol made me feel giddy and powerful until I stood in the kitchen alone. Then I felt dizzy and nauseated.

The house was cold. It felt like something that deserved to be destroyed. It was filled with objects over which the aunties fought. Valuable art, china, photographs. All of them fueled family anger. I hit my fist against the kitchen portrait of Mummy, Carrie, and Bess as children, grinning for the camera. The glass on it shattered and I stumbled back.

The wine was muddling my head now. I wasn’t used to it.

The gas can in one hand and the bag of kindling in the other, I decided to get this done as fast as possible. I doused the kitchen first, then the pantry. I did the dining room and was soaking the living room couches when I realized I should have started at the end of the house farthest from the mudroom door. That was our exit. I should have done the kitchen last so I could run out without wetting my feet with gasoline.

Stupid.

The formal door that opened onto the front porch from the living room was soaked already, but there was a small back door, too. It was by Granddad’s study and led to the walkway down to the staff building. I would use that.

I doused part of the hall and then the craft room, feeling a wave of sorrow for the ruin of Gran’s beautiful cotton prints and colorful yarns. She would have hated what I was doing. She loved her fabrics, her old sewing machine, her pretty, pretty objects.

Stupid again. I had soaked my espadrilles in fuel.

All right. Stay calm. I’d wear them until I was done and then toss them into the fire behind me as I ran outside.

In Granddad’s study I stood on the desk, splashing bookshelves up to the ceiling, holding the gas can far away from me. There was a fair amount of gas left, and this was my last room, so I soaked the books heavily.

Then I wet the floor, piled the kindling on it, and backed into the small foyer that led to the rear door. I got my shoes off and threw them onto the stack of magazines. I stepped onto a square of dry floor and set the gas can down. Pulled a matchbook from the pocket of my jeans and lit my paper towel roll.

I threw the flaming roll into the kindling and watched it light. It caught, and grew, and spread. Through the double-wide study doors, I saw a line of flame zip down the hallway on one side and into the living room on the other. The couch lit up.

Then, before me, the bookshelves burst into flames, the gas-soaked paper burning quicker than anything else. Suddenly the ceiling was alight. I couldn’t look away. The flames were terrible. Unearthly.

Then someone screamed.

And screamed again.

It was coming from the room directly above me, a bedroom. Johnny was working on the second floor. I had lit the study, and the study had burned faster than anywhere else. The fire was rising, and Johnny wasn’t out.

Oh no, oh no, oh no. I threw myself at the back door but found it heavily bolted. My hands were slippery with gas. The metal was hot already. I flipped the bolts—one, two, three—but something went wrong and the door stuck.

Another scream.

I tried the bolts again. Failed. Gave up.

I covered my mouth and nose with my hands and ran through the burning study and down the flaming hallway into the kitchen. The room wasn’t lit yet, thank God. I rushed across the wet floor toward the mudroom door.

Stumbled, skidded, and fell, soaking myself in the puddles of gasoline.

The hems of my jeans were burning from my run through the study. The flames licked out to the gas on the kitchen floor and streaked across to the wooden farmhouse cabinetry and Gran’s cheery dish towels. Fire zipped across the mudroom exit in front of me and I could see my jeans were now alight as well, from knee to ankle. I hurled myself toward the mudroom door, running through flames.

“Get out!” I yelled, though I doubted anyone could hear me. “Get out now!”

Outside I threw myself onto the grass. Rolled until my pants stopped burning.

I could see already that the top two floors of Clairmont were glowing with heat, and my own ground floor was fully alight. The basement level, I couldn’t tell.

“Gat? Johnny? Mirren? Where are you?”

No answer.

Holding down panic, I told myself they must be out by now.

Calm down. It would all be okay. It had to.

“Where are you?” I yelled again, beginning to run.

Again, no answer.

They were likely at the boathouse, dropping their gas cans. It wasn’t far, and I ran, calling their names as loud as I could. My bare feet hit the wooden walkway with a strange echo.

The door was closed. I yanked it open. “Gat! Johnny? Mirren!”

No one there, but they could already be at Cuddledown, couldn’t they? Wondering what was taking me so long.

A walkway stretches from the boathouse past the tennis courts and over to Cuddledown. I ran again, the island strangely hushed in the dark. I told myself over and over: They will be there. Waiting for me. Worrying about me.

We will laugh because we’re all safe. We will soak my burns in ice water and feel all kinds of lucky.

We will.

But as I came upon it, I saw the house was dark.

No one waited there.

I tore back to Clairmont, and when it came into view it was burning, bottom to top. The turret room was lit, the bedrooms were lit, the windows of the basement glowed orange. Everything hot.

I ran to the mudroom entry and pulled the door. Smoke billowed out. I pulled off my gas-soaked sweater and jeans, choking and gagging. I pushed my way in and entered the kitchen stairwell, heading toward the basement.

Halfway down the steps there was a wall of flames. A wall.

Gat wasn’t out. And he wasn’t coming.

I turned back and ran up toward Johnny and Mirren, but the wood was burning beneath my feet.

The banister lit up. The stairwell in front of me caved in, throwing sparks.

I reeled back.

I could not go up.

I could not save them.

There was nowhere

nowhere

nowhere

nowhere now to go but down.

82

I REMEMBER THIS like I am living it as I sit on the steps of Windemere, still staring at the spot where Gat disappeared into the night. The realization of what I have done comes as a fog in my chest, cold, dark, and spreading. I grimace and hunch over. The icy fog runs from my chest through my back and up my neck. It shoots through my head and down my spine.

Cold, cold, remorse.

I shouldn’t have soaked the kitchen first. I shouldn’t have lit the fire in the study.

How stupid to wet the books so thoroughly. Anyone might have predicted how they would burn. Anyone.

We should have had a set time to light our kindling.

I might have insisted we stay together.

I should never have checked the boathouse.

Should never have run to Cuddledown.

If only I’d gone back to Clairmont faster, maybe I could have gotten Johnny out. Or warned Gat before the basement caught. Maybe I could have found the fire extinguishers and stopped the flames somehow.

Maybe, maybe.

If only, if only.

I wanted so much for us: a life free of constriction and prejudice. A life free to love and be loved.

And here, I have killed them.

My Liars, my darlings.

Killed them. My Mirren, my Johnny, my Gat.

This knowledge goes from my spine down my shoulders and through my fingertips. It turns them to ice. They chip and break, tiny pieces shattering on the Windemere steps. Cracks splinter up my arms and through my shoulders and the front of my neck. My face is frozen and fractured in a witch’s snarl of grief. My throat is closed. I cannot make a sound.

Here I am frozen, when I deserve to burn.

I should have shut up about taking things into our own hands. I could have stayed silent. Compromised. Talking on the phone would have been fine. Soon we’d have driver’s licenses. Soon we’d go to college and the beautiful Sinclair houses would seem far away and unimportant.

We could have been patient.

I could have been a voice of reason.

Maybe then, when we drank the aunties’ wine, we’d have forgotten our ambitions. The drink would have made us sleepy. We’d have dozed off in front of the television set, angry and impotent, perhaps, but without setting fire to anything.

I can’t take any of it back.

I crawl indoors and up to my bedroom on hands of cracked ice, trailing shards of my frozen body behind me. My heels, my kneecaps. Beneath the blankets, I shiver convulsively, pieces of me breaking off onto my pillow. Fingers. Teeth. Jawbone. Collarbone.

Finally, finally, the shivering stops. I begin to warm and melt.

I cry for my aunts, who lost their firstborn children.

For Will, who lost his brother.

For Liberty, Bonnie, and Taft, who lost their sister.

For Granddad, who saw not just his palace burn to the ground, but his grandchildren perish.

For the dogs, the poor naughty dogs.

I cry for the vain, thoughtless complaints I’ve made all summer. For my shameful self-pity. For my plans for the future.

I cry for all my possessions, given away. I miss my pillow, my books, my photographs. I shudder at my delusions of charity, at my shame masquerading as virtue, at lies I’ve told myself, punishments I’ve inflicted on myself, and punishments I’ve inflicted on my mother.

I cry with horror that all the family has been burdened by me, and even more with being the cause of so much grief.

We did not, after all, save the idyll. That is gone forever, if it ever existed. We have lost the innocence of it, of those days before we knew the extent of the aunts’ rage, before Gran’s death and Granddad’s deterioration.

Before we became criminals. Before we became ghosts.

The aunties hug one another not because they are freed of the weight of Clairmont house and all it symbolized, but out of tragedy and empathy. Not because we freed them, but because we wrecked them, and they clung to one another in the face of horror.

Johnny. Johnny wanted to run a marathon. He wanted to go mile upon mile, proving his lungs would not give out. Proving he was the man Granddad wanted him to be, proving his strength, though he was so small.

His lungs filled with smoke. He has nothing to prove now. There is nothing to run for.

He wanted to own a car and eat fancy cakes he saw in bakery widows. He wanted to laugh big and own art and wear beautifully made clothes. Sweaters, scarves, wooly items with stripes. He wanted to make a tuna fish of Lego and hang it like a piece of taxidermy. He refused to be serious, he was infuriatingly unserious, but he was as committed to the things that mattered to him as anyone could possibly be. The running. Will and Carrie. The Liars. His sense of what was right. He gave up his college fund without a second thought, to stand up for his principles.

I think of Johnny’s strong arms, the stripe of white sunblock on his nose, the time we were sick together from poison ivy and lay next to each other in the hammock, scratching. The time he built me and Mirren a dollhouse of cardboard and stones he’d found on the beach.

Jonathan Sinclair Dennis, you would have been a light in the dark for so many people.

You have been one. You have.

And I have let you down the worst possible way.

I cry for Mirren, who wanted to see the Congo. She didn’t know how she wanted to live or what she believed yet; she was searching and knew she was drawn to that place. It will never be real to her now, never anything more than photographs and films and stories published for people’s entertainment.

Mirren talked a lot about sexual intercourse but never had it. When we were younger, she and I would stay up late, sleeping together on the Windemere porch in sleeping bags, laughing and eating fudge. We fought over Barbie dolls and did each other’s makeup and dreamed of love. Mirren will never have a wedding with yellow roses or a groom who loves her enough to wear a stupid yellow cummerbund.

She was irritable. And bossy. But always funny about it. It was easy to make her mad, and she was nearly always cross with Bess and annoyed with the twins—but then she’d fill with regret, moaning in agony over her own sharp tongue. She did love her family, loved all of them, and would read them books or help them make ice cream or give them pretty shells she had found.

She cannot make amends anymore.

She did not want to be like her mother. Not a princess, no. An explorer, a businesswoman, a Good Samaritan, an ice cream maker—something.

Something she will never be, because of me.

Mirren, I can’t even say sorry. There is not even a Scrabble word for how bad I feel.

And Gat, my Gat.

He will never go to college. He had that hungry mind, constantly turning things over, looking not for answers but for understanding. He will never satisfy his curiosity, never finish the hundred best novels ever written, never be the great man he might have been.

He wanted to stop evil. He wanted to express his anger. He lived big, my brave Gat. He didn’t shut up when people wanted him to, he made them listen—and then he listened in return. He refused to take things lightly, though he was always quick to laugh.

Oh, he made me laugh. And made me think, even when I didn’t feel like thinking, even when I was too lazy to pay attention.

Gat let me bleed on him and bleed on him and bleed on him. He never minded. He wanted to know why I was bleeding. He wondered what he could do to heal the wound.

He will never eat chocolate again.

I loved him. I love him. As best I could. But he was right. I did not know him all the way. I will never see his apartment, eat his mother’s cooking, meet his friends from school. I will never see the bedspread on his bed or the posters on his walls. I’ll never know the diner where he got egg sandwiches in the morning or the corner where he double-locked his bike.

I don’t even know if he bought egg sandwiches or hung posters. I don’t know if he owned a bike or had a bedspread. I am only imagining the corner bike racks and the double locks, because I never went home with him, never saw his life, never knew that person Gat was when not on Beechwood Island.

His room must be empty by now. He has been dead two years.

We might have been.

We might have been.

I have lost you, Gat, because of how desperately, desperately I fell in love.

I think of my Liars burning, in their last few minutes, breathing smoke, their skin alight. How much it must have hurt.

Mirren’s hair in flames. Johnny’s body on the floor. Gat’s hands, his fingertips burnt, his arms shriveling with fire.

On the backs of his hands, words. Left: Gat. Right: Cadence.

My handwriting.

I cry because I am the only one of us still alive. Because I will have to go through life without the Liars. Because they will have to go through whatever awaits them, without me.

Me, Gat, Johnny, and Mirren.

Mirren, Gat, Johnny, and me.

We have been here, this summer.

And we have not been here.

Yes, and no.

It is my fault, my fault, my fault—and yet they love me anyway. Despite the poor dogs, despite my stupidity and grandiosity, despite our crime. Despite my selfishness, despite my whining, despite my stupid dumb luck in being the only one left and my inability to appreciate it, when they—they have nothing. Nothing, anymore, but this last summer together.

They have said they love me.

I have felt it in Gat’s kiss.

In Johnny’s laugh.

Mirren shouted it across the sea, even.

I GUESS THAT is why they’ve been here.

I needed them.

83

MUMMY BANGS ON my door and calls my name.

I do not answer.

An hour later, she bangs again.

“Let me in, won’t you?”

“Go away.”

“Is it a migraine? Just tell me that.”

“It isn’t a migraine,” I say. “It’s something else.”

“I love you, Cady,” she says.

She says it all the time since I got sick, but only now do I see that what Mummy means is,

I love you in spite of my grief. Even though you are crazy.

I love you in spite of what I suspect you have done.

“You know we all love you, right?” she calls through the door. “Aunt Bess and Aunt Carrie and Granddad and everyone? Bess is making the blueberry pie you like. It’ll be out in half an hour. You could have it for breakfast. I asked her.”

I stand. Go to the door and open it a crack. “Tell Bess I say thank you,” I say. “I just can’t come right now.”

“You’ve been crying,” Mummy says.

“A little.”

“I see.”

“Sorry. I know you want me at the house for breakfast.”

“You don’t need to say you’re sorry,” Mummy tells me. “Really, you don’t ever have to say it, Cady.”

84

AS USUAL, NO one is visible at Cuddledown until my feet make sounds on the steps. Then Johnny appears at the door, stepping gingerly over the crushed glass. When he sees my face, he stops.

“You’ve remembered,” he says.

I nod.

“You’ve remembered everything?”

“I didn’t know if you would still be here,” I say.

He reaches out to hold my hand. He feels warm and substantial, though he looks pale, washed out, bags under his eyes. And young.

He is only fifteen.

“We can’t stay much longer,” Johnny says. “It’s getting harder and harder.”

I nod.

“Mirren’s got it the worst, but Gat and I are feeling it, too.”

“Where will you go?”

“When we leave?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Same place as when you’re not here. Same place as we’ve been. It’s like—” Johnny pauses, scratches his head. “It’s like a rest. It’s like nothing, in a way. And honestly, Cady, I love you, but I’m fucking tired. I just want to lie down and be done. All this happened a very long time ago, for me.”

I look at him. “I’m so, so sorry, my dear old Johnny,” I say, feeling the tears well behind my eyes.

“Not your fault,” says Johnny. “I mean, we all did it, we all went crazy, we have to take responsibility. You shouldn’t carry the weight of it,” he says. “Be sad, be sorry—but don’t shoulder it.”

We go into the house and Mirren comes out of her bedroom. I realize she probably wasn’t there until moments before I walked through the door. She hugs me. Her honey hair is dim and the edges of her mouth look dry and cracked. “I’m sorry I didn’t do all of this better, Cady,” she says. “I got one chance to be here, and I don’t know, I drew it out, told so many lies.”

“It’s all right.”

“I want to be an accepting person, but I am so full of leftover rage. I imagined I’d be saintly and wise, but instead I’ve been jealous of you, mad at the rest of my family. It’s just messed up and now it’s done,” she says, burying her face in my shoulder.

I put my arms around her. “You were yourself, Mirren,” I say. “I don’t want anything else.”

“I have to go now,” she says. “I can’t be here any longer. I’m going down to the sea.”

No. Please.

Don’t go. Don’t leave me, Mirren, Mirren.

I need you.

That is what I want to say, to shout. But I do not.

And part of me wants to bleed across the great room floor or melt into a puddle of grief.

But I do not do that, either. I do not complain or ask for pity.

I cry instead. I cry and squeeze Mirren and kiss her on her warm cheek and try to memorize her face.

We hold hands as the three of us walk down to the tiny beach.

Gat is there, waiting for us. His profile against the lit sky. I will see it forever like that. He turns and smiles at me. Runs and picks me up, swinging me around as if there’s something to celebrate. As if we are a happy couple, in love on the beach.

I am not sobbing anymore, but tears stream from my eyes without cease. Johnny takes off his button-down and hands it to me. “Wipe your snotface,” he says kindly.

Mirren strips off her sundress and stands there in a bathing suit. “I can’t believe you put on a bikini for this,” says Gat, his arms still around me.

“Certifiable,” adds Johnny.

“I love this bikini,” says Mirren. “I got it in Edgartown, summer fifteen. Do you remember, Cady?”

And I find that I do.

We were desperately bored; the littles had rented bikes to go on this scenic ride to Oak Bluffs and we had no idea when they’d return. We had to wait and bring them back on the boat. So, whatever, we’d shopped for fudge, we’d looked at wind socks, and finally we went into a tourist shop and tried on the tackiest bathing suits we could find.

“It says The Vineyard Is for Lovers on the butt,” I tell Johnny.

Mirren turns around, and indeed it does. “Blaze of glory and all that,” she says, not without bitterness.

She walks over, kisses me on the cheek, and says, “Be a little kinder than you have to, Cady, and things will be all right.”

“And never eat anything bigger than your ass!” yells Johnny. He gives me a quick hug and kicks off his shoes. The two of them wade into the sea.

I turn to Gat. “You going, too?”

He nods.

“I am so sorry, Gat,” I say. “I am so, so sorry, and I will never be able to make it up to you.”

He kisses me, and I can feel him shaking, and I wrap my arms around him like I could stop him from disappearing, like I could make this moment last, but his skin is cold and damp with tears and I know he is leaving.

It is good to be loved, even though it will not last.

It is good to know that once upon a time, there was Gat and me.

Then he takes off, and I cannot bear to be separate from him, and I think, this cannot be the end. It can’t be true we won’t ever be together again, not when our love is so real. The story is supposed to have a happy ending.

But no.

He is leaving me.

He is dead already, of course.

The story ended a long time ago.

Gat runs into the sea without looking back, plunging in, in all his clothes, diving underneath the small waves.

The Liars swim out, past the edge of the cove and into the open ocean. The sun is high in the sky and glints off the water, so bright, so bright. And then they dive—

or something—

or something—

and they are gone.

I am left, there on the southern tip of Beechwood Island. I am on the tiny beach, alone.

85

I SLEEP FOR what might be days. I can’t get up.

I open my eyes, it’s light out.

I open my eyes, it’s dark.

Finally I stand. In the bathroom mirror, my hair is no longer black. It has faded to a rusty brown, with blond roots. My skin is freckled and my lips are sunburnt.

I am not sure who that girl in the mirror is.

Bosh, Grendel, and Poppy follow me out of the house, panting and wagging their tails. In the New Clairmont kitchen, the aunties are making sandwiches for a picnic lunch. Ginny is cleaning out the refrigerator. Ed is putting bottles of lemonade and ginger ale into a cooler.

Ed.

Hello, Ed.

He waves at me. Opens a bottle of ginger ale and gives it to Carrie. Rummages in the freezer for another bag of ice.

Bonnie is reading and Liberty is slicing tomatoes. Two cakes, one marked chocolate and one vanilla, rest in bakery boxes on the counter. I tell the twins happy birthday.

Bonnie looks up from her Collective Apparitions book. “Are you feeling better?” she asks me.

“I am.”

“You don’t look much better.”

“Shut up.”

“Bonnie is a wench and there’s nothing to do about it,” says Liberty. “But we’re going tubing tomorrow morning if you want to come.”

“Okay,” I say.

“You can’t drive. We’re driving.”

“Yeah.”

Mummy gives me a hug, one of her long, concerned hugs, but I don’t speak to her about anything.

Not yet. Not for a while, maybe.

Anyway, she knows I remember.

She knew when she came to my door, I could tell.

I let her give me a scone she’s saved from breakfast and get myself some orange juice from the fridge.

I find a Sharpie and write on my hands.

Left: Be a little. Right: Kinder.

Outside, Taft and Will are goofing around in the Japanese garden. They are looking for unusual stones. I look with them. They tell me to search for glittery ones and also ones that could be arrowheads.

When Taft gives me a purple one he’s found, because he remembers I like purple rocks, I put it in my pocket.

86

GRANDDAD AND I go to Edgartown that afternoon. Bess insists on driving us, but she goes off by herself while we go shopping. I find pretty fabric shoulder bags for the twins and Granddad insists on buying me a book of fairy tales at the Edgartown bookshop.

“I see Ed’s back,” I say as we wait at the register.

“Um-hm.”

“You don’t like him.”

“Not that much.”

“But he’s here.”

“Yes.”

“With Carrie.”

“Yes, he is.” Granddad wrinkles his brow. “Now stop bothering me. Let’s go to the fudge shop,” he says. And so we do. It is a good outing. He only calls me Mirren once.

THE BIRTHDAY IS celebrated at suppertime with cake and presents. Taft gets hopped up on sugar and scrapes his knee falling off a big rock in the garden. I take him into the bathroom to find a Band-Aid. “Mirren used to always do my Band-Aids,” he tells me. “I mean, when I was little.”

I squeeze his arm. “Do you want me to do your Band-Aids now?”

“Shut up,” he says. “I’m ten already.”

THE NEXT DAY I go to Cuddledown and look under the kitchen sink.

There are sponges there, and spray cleaner that smells like lemons. Paper towels. A jug of bleach.

I sweep away the crushed glass and tangled ribbons. I fill bags with empty bottles. I vacuum crushed potato chips. I scrub the sticky floor of the kitchen. Wash the quilts.

I wipe grime from windows and put the board games in the closet and clean the garbage from the bedrooms.

I leave the furniture as Mirren liked it.

On impulse, I take a pad of sketch paper and a ballpoint from Taft’s room and begin to draw. They are barely more than stick figures, but you can tell they are my Liars.

Gat, with his dramatic nose, sits cross-legged, reading a book.

Mirren wears a bikini and dances.

Johnny sports a snorkeling mask and holds a crab in one hand.

When it’s done, I stick the picture on the fridge next to the old crayon drawings of Dad, Gran, and the goldens.

87

ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. These daughters grew to be women, and the women had children, beautiful children, so many, many children, only something bad happened,

something stupid,

criminal,

terrible,

something avoidable,

something that never should have happened,

and yet something that could, eventually, be forgiven.

The children died in a fire—all except one.

Only one was left, and she—

No, that’s not right.

The children died in a fire, all except three girls and two boys.

There were three girls and two boys left.

Cadence, Liberty, Bonnie, Taft, and Will.

And the three princesses, the mothers, they crumbled in rage and despair. They drank and shopped, starved and scrubbed and obsessed. They clung to one another in grief, forgave each other, and wept. The fathers raged, too, though they were far away; and the king, he descended into a delicate madness from which his old self only sometimes emerged.

The children, they were crazy and sad. They were racked with guilt for being alive, racked with pain in their heads and fear of ghosts, racked with nightmares and strange compulsions, punishments for being alive when the others were dead.

The princesses, the fathers, the king, and the children, they crumbled like eggshells, powdery and beautiful—for they were always beautiful. It seemed

as if

as if

this tragedy marked the end of the family.

And perhaps it did.

But perhaps it did not.

They made a beautiful family. Still.

And they knew it. In fact, the mark of tragedy became, with time, a mark of glamour. A mark of mystery, and a source of fascination for those who viewed the family from afar.

“The eldest children died in a fire,” they say, the villagers of Burlington, the neighbors in Cambridge, the private-school parents of lower Manhattan, and the senior citizens of Boston. “The island caught fire,” they say. “Remember some summers ago?”

The three beautiful daughters became more beautiful still in the eyes of their beholders.

And this fact was not lost upon them. Nor upon their father, even in his decline.

Yet the remaining children,

Cadence, Liberty, Bonnie, Taft, and Will,

they know that tragedy is not glamorous.

They know it doesn’t play out in life as it does on a stage or between the pages of a book. It is neither a punishment meted out nor a lesson conferred. Its horrors are not attributable to one single person.

Tragedy is ugly and tangled, stupid and confusing.

That is what the children know.

And they know that the stories

about their family

are both true and untrue.

There are endless variations.

And people will continue to tell them.

MY FULL NAME is Cadence Sinclair Eastman.

I live in Burlington, Vermont, with Mummy and three dogs.

I am nearly eighteen.

I own a well-used library card, an envelope full of dried beach roses, a book of fairy tales, and a handful of lovely purple rocks. Not much else.

I am

the perpetrator

of a foolish, deluded crime

that became

a tragedy.

Yes, it’s true that I fell in love with someone and that he died, along with the two other people I loved best in this world. That has been the main thing to know about me,

the only thing about me for a very long time,

although I did not know it myself.

But there must be more to know.

There will be more.

MY FULL NAME is Cadence Sinclair Eastman.

I suffer migraines. I do not suffer fools.

I like a twist of meaning.

I endure.