We Were Liars(18)

“There’s a fire poker in Windemere.”

“All right. You’ll help me. As soon as we see that troll, we’ll kill him to death with your fire poker.”

“If you insist.”

I lie back on the blanket and put my arm over my eyes.We are silent for a moment.

“Trolls are nocturnal,” I add.

“Cady?” Gat whispers.

I turn my face to look in his eyes. “Yeah?”

“I thought I might never see you again.”

“What?” He is so close we could kiss.

“I thought I might never see you again. After everything that happened, then when you weren’t here last summer.”

Why didn’t you write me? I want to say. Why didn’t you call, all this time?

He touches my face. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he says. “I’m so glad I got the chance.”

I don’t know what is between us. I really don’t. He is such an ass.

“Give me your hand,” Gat says.

I am not sure I want to.

But then of course I do want to.

His skin is warm and sandy. We intertwine our fingers and close our eyes against the sun.

We just lie there. Holding hands. He rubs my palm with his thumb like he did two summers ago beneath the stars.

And I melt.





27




My room at Windemere is wood-paneled, with cream paint. There’s a green patchwork quilt on the bed. The carpet is one of those rag rugs you see in country inns.

You were here two summers ago, I tell myself. In this room, every night. In this room, every morning.

Presumably you were reading, playing games on the iPad, choosing clothes. What do you remember?

Nothing.

Tasteful botanic prints line the walls of my room, plus some art I made: a watercolor of the magnolia that used to loom over the Clairmont lawn and two crayon drawings: one of Granny Tipper and her dogs, Prince Philip and Fatima; the other of my father. I drag the wicker laundry basket from the closet, take down all the pictures, and load them into the basket.

There’s a bookshelf lined with paperbacks, teen books and fantasy I was into reading a few years back. Kids’ stories I read a hundred times. I pull them down and stack them in the hallway.

“You’re giving away the books? You love books,” Mummy says. She’s coming out of her room wearing fresh clothes for supper. Lipstick.

“We can give them to one of the Vineyard libraries,” I say. “Or to Goodwill.”

Mummy bends over and flips through the paperbacks. “We read Charmed Life together, do you remember?”

I nod.

“And this one, too. The Lives of Christopher Chant. That was the year you were eight. You wanted to read everything but you weren’t a good enough reader yet, so I read to you and Gat for hours and hours.”

“What about Johnny and Mirren?”

“They couldn’t sit still,” says Mummy. “Don’t you want to keep these?”

She reaches out and touches my cheek. I pull back. “I want the things to find a better home,” I tell her.

“I was hoping you would feel different when we came back to the island, is all.”

“You got rid of all Dad’s stuff. You bought a new couch, new dishes, new jewelry.”

“Cady.”

“There’s nothing in our whole house that says he ever lived with us, except me. Why are you allowed to erase my father and I’m not allowed to—”

“Erase yourself?” Mummy says.

“Other people might use these,” I snap, pointing at the stacks of books. “People who have actual needs. Don’t you think of doing good in the world?”

At that moment, Poppy, Bosh, and Grendel hurtle upstairs and clog the hallway where we are standing, snarfling our hands, flapping their hairy tails at our knees.

Mummy and I are silent.

Finally she says, “It’s all right for you to moon around at the tiny beach, or whatever you did this afternoon. It’s all right for you to give away your books if you feel that strongly. But I expect you at Clairmont for supper in an hour with a smile on your face for Granddad. No arguments. No excuses. You understand me?”

I nod.





28




A pad is left from several summers ago when Gat and I got obsessed with graph paper. We made drawing after drawing on it by filling in the tiny squares with colored pencil to make pixilated portraits.

I find a pen and write down all my memories of summer fifteen.

The s’mores, the swim. The attic, the interruption.

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

Mummy, her face tight, asking, “The black pearls?”

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.

And all four of us Liars, laughing so hard we felt dizzy and sick.

I make a separate page for the accident itself. What Mummy’s told me and what I guess. I must have gone swimming on the tiny beach alone. I hit my head on a rock. I must have struggled back to shore. Aunt Bess and Mummy gave me tea. I was diagnosed with hypothermia, respiratory problems, and a brain injury that never showed on the scans.