What kind of person takes action without thinking about who might be locked in an upstairs room, trusting the people who have always kept them safe and loved them?
I am sobbing these strange, silent sobs, standing on the walkway between Windemere and Red Gate. My face is soaked, my chest is contracting. I stumble back home.
Gat is on the steps.
77
He jumps up when he seems me and wraps his arms around me. I sob into his shoulder and tuck my arms under his jacket and around his waist.
He doesn’t ask what’s wrong until I tell him.
“The dogs,” I say finally. “We killed the dogs.”
He is quiet for a moment. Then, “Yeah.”
I don’t speak again until my body stops shaking.
“Let’s sit down,” Gat says.
We settle on the porch steps. Gat rests his head against mine.
“I loved those dogs,” I say.
“We all did.”
“I—” I choke on my words. “I don’t think I should talk about it anymore or I’ll start crying again.”
“All right.”
We sit for a while longer.
“Is that everything?” Gat asks.
“What?”
“Everything you were crying about?”
“God forbid there’s more.”
He is silent.
And still silent.
“Oh hell, there is more,” I say, and my chest feels hollow and iced.
“Yeah,” says Gat. “There is more.”
“More that people aren’t telling me. More that Mummy would rather I didn’t remember.”
He takes a moment to think. “I think we’re telling you, but you can’t hear it. You’ve been sick, Cadence.”
“You’re not telling me directly,” I say.
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Penny said it was best. And—well, with all of us being here, I had faith that you’d remember.” He takes his arm off my shoulder and wraps his hands around his knees.
Gat, my Gat.
He is contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I love the lids of his brown eyes, his smooth dark skin, his lower lip that pushes out. His mind. His mind.
I kiss his cheek. “I remember more about us than I used to,” I tell him. “I remember you and me kissing at the door of the mudroom before it all went so wrong. You and me on the tennis court talking about Ed proposing to Carrie. On the perimeter at the flat rock, where no one could see us. And down on the tiny beach, talking about setting the fire.”
He nods.
“But I still don’t remember what went wrong,” I say. “Why we weren’t together when I got hurt. Did we have an argument? Did I do something? Did you go back to Raquel?” I cannot look him in the eyes. “I think I deserve an honest answer, even if whatever’s between us now isn’t going to last.”
Gat’s face crumples and he hides it in his hands. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Just tell me,” I say.
“I can’t stay here with you,” he says. “I have to go back to Cuddledown.”
“Why?”
“I have to,” he says, standing up and walking. Then he stops and turns. “I messed everything up. I’m so sorry, Cady. I am so, so sorry.” He is crying again. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, or made you a tire swing, or given you roses. I shouldn’t have told you how beautiful you are.”
“I wanted you to.”
“I know, but I should have stayed away. It’s fucked up that I did all that. I’m sorry.”
“Come back here,” I say, but when he doesn’t move, I go to him. Put my hands on his neck and my cheek against his. I kiss him hard so he knows I mean it. His mouth is so soft and he’s just the best person I know, the best person I’ve ever known, no matter what bad things have happened between us and no matter what happens after this. “I love you,” I whisper.
He pulls back. “This is what I’m talking about. I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you.”
He turns around and is lost in dark.
78
The hospital on Martha’s Vineyard. Fifteenth summer, after my accident.
I was lying in a bed under blue sheets. You would think hospital sheets would be white, but these were blue. The room was hot. I had an IV in one arm.
Mummy and Granddad were staring down at me. Granddad was holding a box of Edgartown fudge he’d brought as a gift.
It was touching that he remembered I like the Edgartown fudge.
I was listening to music with ear buds in my ears, so I couldn’t hear what the adults were saying. Mummy was crying.
Granddad opened the fudge, broke off a piece, and offered it to me.
In my ears:
Our youth is wasted
We will not waste it
Remember my name
’Cause we made history
Na na na na, na na na
I lifted my hand to take out the ear buds. The hand I saw was bandaged.
Both my hands were bandaged.
And my feet. I could feel the tape on them, beneath the blue sheets.
My hands and feet were bandaged, because they were burned.
79
Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters.
No, no, wait.
Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods.
Once upon a time there were three billy goats who lived near a bridge.
Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the roads after the war.
Once upon a time there were three little pigs.
Once upon a time there were three brothers.
No, this is it. This is the variation I want.
Once upon a time there were three beautiful children, two boys and a girl. When each baby was born, the parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts.
Bounce, effort, and snark.
Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.
Sugar, curiosity, and rain.
And yet, there was a witch.
There is always a witch.
This witch was the same age as the beautiful children, and as she and they grew, she was jealous of the girl, and jealous of the boys, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening.
The eldest boy was strong and fast, capable and handsome. Though it’s true, he was exceptionally short.
The next boy was studious and open-hearted. Though it’s true, he was an outsider.
And the girl was witty, generous, and ethical. Though it’s true, she felt powerless.
The witch, she was none of these things, for her parents had angered the fairies. No gifts were ever bestowed upon her. She was lonely. Her only strength was her dark and ugly magic.
She confused being spartan with being charitable, and gave away her possessions without truly doing good with them.
She confused being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it.
She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts or making them think.
Her magic was all she had, and she used it to destroy what she most admired. She visited each young person in turn on their tenth birthdays, but did not harm them outright. The protection of some kind fairy—the lilac fairy, perhaps—prevented her from doing so.
What she did instead was curse them.
“When you are sixteen,” proclaimed the witch in a rage of jealousy, “when we are all sixteen,” she told these beautiful children, “you shall prick your finger on a spindle—no, you shall strike a match—yes, you will strike a match and die in its flame.”
The parents of the beautiful children were frightened of the curse, and tried, as people will do, to avoid it. They moved themselves and the children far away, to a castle on a windswept island. A castle where there were no matches.
There, surely, they would be safe.
There, surely, the witch would never find them.
But find them she did. And when they were fifteen, these beautiful children, just before their sixteenth birthdays and when their nervous parents were not yet expecting it, the jealous witch brought her toxic, hateful self into their lives in the shape of a blond maiden.
The maiden befriended the beautiful children. She kissed them and took them on boat rides and brought them fudge and told them stories.
Then she gave them a box of matches.
The children were entranced, for at nearly sixteen they had never seen fire.