“Uh-huh.”
“Do you know what it was?”
“Penny said the doctors want it left alone. You’ll remember in your own time and no one should push it on you.”
“But I am asking, Mirren. I need to know.”
She puts her head down on her knees. Thinking. “What is your best guess?” she finally says.
“I—I suppose I was the victim of something.” It is hard to say these words. “I suppose that I was raped or attacked or some godforsaken something. That’s the kind of thing that makes people have amnesia, isn’t it?”
Mirren rubs her lips. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she says.
“Tell me what happened,” I say.
“It was a messed-up summer.”
“How so?”
“That’s all I can say, my darling Cady.”
“Why won’t you ever leave Cuddledown?” I ask suddenly.
“You hardly ever leave except to go to the tiny beach.”
“I went kayaking today,” she says.
“But you got sick. Do you have that fear?” I ask. “That fear of going out? Agoraphobia?”
“I don’t feel well, Cady,” says Mirren, defensive. “I am cold all the time, I can’t stop shivering. My throat is raw. If you felt this way, you wouldn’t go out, either.”
I feel worse than that all the time, but for once I don’t mention my headaches. “We should tell Bess, then. Take you to the doctor.”
Mirren shakes her head. “It’s just a stupid cold I can’t shake. I’m being a baby about it. Will you get me a ginger ale?”
I cannot argue anymore. I get her a ginger ale and we turn on the television.
56
IN THE MORNING, there is a tire swing hanging from the tree on the lawn of Windemere. The same way one used to hang from the huge old maple in front of Clairmont.
It is perfect.
Just like the one Granny Tipper spun me on. Dad.
Granddad.
Mummy.
Like the one Gat and I kissed on in the middle of the night.
I remember now, summer fifteen, Johnny, Mirren, Gat, and I squashed into that Clairmont swing together. We were much too big to fit. We elbowed each other and rearranged ourselves. We giggled and complained. Accused each other of having big asses. Accused each other of being smelly and rearranged again.
Finally we got settled. Then we couldn’t spin. We were jammed so hard into the swing, there was no way to get moving. We yelled and yelled for a push. The twins walked by and refused to help. Finally, Taft and Will came out of Clairmont and did our bidding. Grunting, they pushed us in a wide circle. Our weight was such that after they let us go, we spun faster and faster, laughing so hard we felt dizzy and sick.
All four of us Liars. I remember that now.
THIS NEW SWING looks strong. The knots are tied carefully.
Inside the tire is an envelope.
Gat’s handwriting: For Cady.
I open the envelope.
More than a dozen dried beach roses spill out.
57
ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. He gave them whatever their hearts desired, and when they grew of age their marriages were celebrated with grand festivities. When the youngest daughter gave birth to a baby girl, the king and queen were overjoyed. Soon afterward, the middle daughter gave birth to a girl of her own, and the celebrations were repeated.
Last, the eldest daughter gave birth to twin boys—but alas, all was not as one might hope. One of the twins was human, a bouncing baby boy; the other was no more than a mouseling.
There was no celebration. No announcements were made.
The eldest daughter was consumed with shame. One of her children was nothing but an animal. He would never sparkle, sunburnt and blessed, the way members of the royal family were expected to do.
The children grew, and the mouseling as well. He was clever and always kept his whiskers clean. He was smarter and more curious than his brother or his cousins.
Still, he disgusted the king and he disgusted the queen. As soon as she was able, his mother set the mouseling on his feet, gave him a small satchel in which she had placed a blueberry and some nuts, and sent him off to see the world.
Set out he did, for the mouseling had seen enough of courtly life to know that should he stay home he would always be a dirty secret, a source of humiliation to his mother and anyone who knew of him.
He did not even look back at the castle that had been his home.
There, he would never even have a name.
Now, he was free to go forth and make a name for himself in the wide, wide world.
And maybe,
just maybe,
he’d come back one day,
and burn that
fucking
palace
to the ground.
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.