She could do it again.
Jule took off the jade viper ring, threw it on the floor, and watched as it rolled to the back of the bus. In Culebra, no one looked at identification.
The gun felt hot against her back. She was armed. She had no heart to break.
Like the hero of an action movie, Jule West Williams was the center of the story.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I was inspired by many, many books and films in the writing of Genuine Fraud: Victorian orphan stories, con artist tales, antihero novels, action movies, noir films, superhero comics, tales told backward, stories of class mobility, and books about the lives of ferociously ambitious, unhappy women. The novel I have written feels to me like layer upon layer of references. I cannot possibly name all my influences, but particular debt goes to Patricia Highsmith for The Talented Mr. Ripley, to Mark Seal for The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, and to Charles Dickens for Great Expectations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my early readers for their detailed feedback: Ivy Aukin, Coe Booth, Matt de la Pe?a, Justine Larbalestier, and Zoey Peresman. Even bigger thanks to Sarah Mlynowski, who read multiple drafts. Photographer Heather Weston created a gorgeous set of images inspired by the novel and added a lot to my understanding of its aesthetic. I’m indebted to Ally Carter, Laura Ruby, Anne Ursu, Robin Wasserman, Scott Westerfeld, Gayle Forman, Melissa Kantor, Bob, Meg Wolitzer, Kate Carr, Libba Bray, and Len Jenkin for support and kibbitzing. My agent, Elizabeth Kaplan, has been a champion; her assistant, Brian McGuffog, a huge help. Thanks to Jane Harris and Emma Matthewson at HotKey and to Eva Mills and Elise Jones at Allen and Unwin for their early enthusiasm. Thanks to Ramona Jenkin for medical expertise. Gratitude to the amazing team at Penguin Random House, including but not limited to John Adamo, Laura Antonacci, Dominique Cimina, Kathleen Dunn, Colleen Fellingham, Anna Gjesteby, Rebecca Gudelis, Christine Labov, Casey Lloyd, Barbara Marcus, Lisa Nadel, Adrienne Waintraub—and in particular to my demanding, patient, and encouraging action-hero editor, Beverly Horowitz. Thanks to my family, near and far, and to Daniel Aukin most of all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
e. lockhart wrote the New York Times bestseller We Were Liars, which is also available in a deluxe edition with new material included. Her other books include Fly on the Wall, Dramarama, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and the Ruby Oliver Quartet: The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, The Treasure Map of Boys, and Real Live Boyfriends. Visit her online at emilylockhart.com and follow @elockhart on Twitter.
1
WELCOME TO THE beautiful Sinclair family.
No one is a criminal.
No one is an addict.
No one is a failure.
The Sinclairs are athletic, tall, and handsome. We are old-money Democrats. Our smiles are wide, our chins square, and our tennis serves aggressive.
It doesn’t matter if divorce shreds the muscles of our hearts so that they will hardly beat without a struggle. It doesn’t matter if trust-fund money is running out; if credit card bills go unpaid on the kitchen counter. It doesn’t matter if there’s a cluster of pill bottles on the bedside table.
It doesn’t matter if one of us is desperately, desperately in love.
So much
in love
that equally desperate measures must be taken.
We are Sinclairs.
No one is needy.
No one is wrong.
We live, at least in the summertime, on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts.
Perhaps that is all you need to know.
2
MY FULL NAME is Cadence Sinclair Eastman.
I live in Burlington, Vermont, with Mummy and three dogs.
I am nearly eighteen.
I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects.
I used to be blond, but now my hair is black.
I used to be strong, but now I am weak.
I used to be pretty, but now I look sick.
It is true I suffer migraines since my accident.
It is true I do not suffer fools.
I like a twist of meaning. You see? Suffer migraines. Do not suffer fools. The word means almost the same as it did in the previous sentence, but not quite.
Suffer.
You could say it means endure, but that’s not exactly right.
—
MY STORY STARTS before the accident. June of the summer I was fifteen, my father ran off with some woman he loved more than us.
Dad was a middling-successful professor of military history. Back then I adored him. He wore tweed jackets. He was gaunt. He drank milky tea. He was fond of board games and let me win, fond of boats and taught me to kayak, fond of bicycles, books, and art museums.
He was never fond of dogs, and it was a sign of how much he loved my mother that he let our golden retrievers sleep on the sofas and walked them three miles every morning. He was never fond of my grandparents, either, and it was a sign of how much he loved both me and Mummy that he spent every summer in Windemere House on Beechwood Island, writing articles on wars fought long ago and putting on a smile for the relatives at every meal.
That June, summer fifteen, Dad announced he was leaving and departed two days later. He told my mother he wasn’t a Sinclair, and couldn’t try to be one, any longer. He couldn’t smile, couldn’t lie, couldn’t be part of that beautiful family in those beautiful houses.
Couldn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
He had hired moving vans already. He’d rented a house, too. My father put a last suitcase into the backseat of the Mercedes (he was leaving Mummy with only the Saab), and started the engine.
Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound, then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps to the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.
Mummy snapped. She said to get hold of myself.
Be normal, now, she said. Right now, she said.
Because you are. Because you can be.
Don’t cause a scene, she told me. Breathe and sit up.
I did what she asked.
She was all I had left.
Mummy and I tilted our square chins high as Dad drove down the hill. Then we went indoors and trashed the gifts he’d given us: jewelry, clothes, books, anything. In the days that followed, we got rid of the couch and armchairs my parents had bought together. Tossed the wedding china, the silver, the photographs.
We purchased new furniture. Hired a decorator. Placed an order for Tiffany silverware. Spent a day walking through art galleries and bought paintings to cover the empty spaces on our walls.
We asked Granddad’s lawyers to secure Mummy’s assets.
Then we packed our bags and went to Beechwood Island.
3
PENNY, CARRIE, AND Bess are the daughters of Tipper and Harris Sinclair. Harris came into his money at twenty-one after Harvard and grew the fortune doing business I never bothered to understand. He inherited houses and land. He made intelligent decisions about the stock market. He married Tipper and kept her in the kitchen and the garden. He put her on display in pearls and on sailboats. She seemed to enjoy it.