We Were Liars (17 page)

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.

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
.

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.

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.

WE THOUGHT.

We talked.

What if, we said,