We Were Liars(47)

“Granddad only lacks power because he’s demented,” says Mirren. “He would still torture everybody if he could.”

“I don’t I agree with you,” says Gat. “New Clairmont seems like a punishment to me.”

“What?” she asks.

“A self-punishment. He built himself a home that isn’t a home. It’s deliberately uncomfortable.”

“Why would he do that?” I ask.

“Why did you give away all your belongings?” Gat asks.

He is staring at me. They are all staring at me.

“To be charitable,” I answer. “To do some good in the world.”

There is a strange silence.

“I hate clutter,” I say.

No one laughs. I don’t know how this conversation came to be all about me.

None of the Liars speaks for a long time. Then Johnny says, “Don’t push it, Gat,” and Gat says, “I’m glad you remember the fire, Cadence,” and I say, “Yah, well, some of it,” and Mirren says she doesn’t feel well and goes back to bed.

The boys and I lie on the kitchen floor and stare at the ceiling for a while longer, until I realize, with some embarrassment, that they have both fallen asleep.





73




I find my mother on the Windemere porch with the goldens. She is crocheting a scarf of pale blue wool.

“You’re always at Cuddledown,” Mummy complains. “It’s not good to be down there all the time. Carrie went yesterday, looking for a something, and she said it was filthy. What have you been doing?”

“Nothing. Sorry about the mess.”

“If it’s really dirty we can’t ask Ginny to clean it. You know that, right? It’s not fair to her. And Bess will have a fit if she sees it.”

I don’t want anyone coming into Cuddledown. I want it just for us. “Don’t worry.” I sit down and pat Bosh on his sweet yellow head. “Listen, Mummy?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you tell the family not to talk to me about the fire?”

She puts down her yarn and looks at me for a long time. “You remember the fire?”

“Last night, it came rushing back. I don’t remember all of it, but yeah. I remember it happened. I remember you all argued. And everyone left the island. I remember I was here with Gat, Mirren, and Johnny.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“What the sky looked like. With the flames. The smell of the smoke.”

If Mummy thinks I am in any way at fault, she will never, ever, ask me. I know she won’t.

She doesn’t want to know.

I changed the course of her life. I changed the fate of the family. The Liars and I.

It was a horrible thing to do. Maybe. But it was something. It wasn’t sitting by, complaining. I am a more powerful person than my mother will ever know. I have trespassed against her and helped her, too.

She strokes my hair. So cloying. I pull back. “That’s all?” she asks.

“Why doesn’t anyone talk to me about it?” I repeat.

“Because of your—because of—” Mummy stops, looking for words. “Because of your pain.”

“Because I have headaches, because I can’t remember my accident, I can’t handle the idea that Clairmont burned down?”

“The doctors told me not to add stress to your life,” she says. “They said the fire might have triggered the headaches, whether it was smoke inhalation or—or fear,” she finishes lamely.

“I’m not a child,” I say. “I can be trusted to know basic information about our family. All summer I’ve been working to remember my accident, and what happened right before. Why not tell me, Mummy?”

“I did tell you. Two years ago. I told you over and over, but you never remembered it the next day. And when I talked to the doctor, he said I shouldn’t keep upsetting you that way, shouldn’t keep pushing you.”

“You live with me!” I cry. “Don’t you have any faith in your own judgment over that of some doctor who barely knows me?”

“He’s an expert.”

“What makes you think I’d want my whole extended family keeping secrets from me—even the twins, even Will and Taft, for God’s sake—rather than know what happened? What makes you think I am so fragile I can’t even know simple facts?”

“You seem that fragile to me,” says Mummy. “And to be honest, I haven’t been sure I could handle your reaction.”

“You can’t even imagine how insulting that is.”

“I love you,” she says.

I can’t look at her pitying, self-justifying face any longer.





74




Mirren is in my room when I open the door. She is sitting at my desk with her hand on my laptop.

“I wonder if I could read the emails you sent me last year,” she says. “Do you have them on your computer?”

“Yeah.”

“I never read them,” she says. “At the start of the summer I pretended I did, but I never even opened them.”

“Why not?”

“I just didn’t,” she says. “I thought it didn’t matter, but now I think it does. And look!” She makes her voice light. “I even left the house to do it!”