We Were Liars

by E. Lockhart

  “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 Will. 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 other 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.

  Bu 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 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.r />
  “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, and I think maybe they did, 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. What I 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. Here with the Liars, I can see the truth at last. “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.”