Page 70 of We Were Liars

“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.”