Go on, strike, said the witch, smiling. Fire is beautiful. Nothing bad will happen.
Go on, she said, the flames will cleanse your souls.
Go on, she said, for you are independent thinkers.
Go on, she said. What is this life we lead, if you do not take action?
And they listened.
They took the matches from her and they struck them. The witch watched their beauty burn, their bounce,
their intelligence,
their wit,
their open hearts,
their charm,
their dreams for the future.
She watched it all disappear in smoke.
Part Five
Truth
80
Here is the truth about the Beautiful Sinclair Family. At least, the truth as Granddad knows it. The truth he was careful to keep out of all newspapers.
One night, two summers ago, on a warm July evening,
Gatwick Matthew Patil,
Mirren Sinclair Sheffield,
and
Jonathan Sinclair Dennis
perished in a house fire thought to be caused by a jug of motorboat fuel that overturned in the mudroom. The house in question burned to the ground before the neighboring fire departments arrived on the scene.
Cadence Sinclair Eastman was present on the island at the time of the fire but did not notice it until it was well under way. The conflagration prevented her from entering the building when she realized there were people and animals trapped inside. She sustained burns to the hands and feet in her rescue attempts. Then she ran to another home on the island and telephoned the fire department.
When help finally arrived, Miss Eastman was found on the tiny beach, half underwater and curled into a ball. She was unable to answer questions about what happened and appeared to have suffered a head injury. She had to be heavily sedated for many days following the accident.
Harris Sinclair, owner of the island, declined any formal investigation of the fire’s origin. Many of the surrounding trees were decimated.
Funerals were held for
Gatwick Matthew Patil,
Mirren Sinclair Sheffield,
and
Jonathan Sinclair Dennis
in their hometowns of Cambridge and New York City.
Cadence Sinclair Eastman was not well enough to attend.
The following summer, the Sinclair family returned to Beechwood Island. They fell apart. They mourned. They drank a lot.
Then they built a new house on the ashes of the old.
Cadence Sinclair Eastman had no memory of the events surrounding the fire, no memory of it ever happening. Her burns healed quickly but she exhibited selective amnesia regarding the events of the previous summer. She persisted in believing she had injured her head while swimming. Doctors presumed her crippling migraine headaches were caused by unacknowledged grief and guilt. She was heavily medicated and extremely fragile both physically and mentally.
These same doctors advised Cadence’s mother to stop explaining the tragedy if Cadence could not recall it herself. It was too much to be told of the trauma fresh each day. Let her remember in her own time. She should not return to Beechwood Island until she’d had significant time to heal. In fact, any measures possible should be taken to keep her from the island in the year immediately after the accident.
Cadence displayed a disquieting desire to rid herself of all unnecessary possessions, even things of sentimental value, almost as if doing penance for past crimes. She darkened her hair and took to dressing very simply. Her mother sought professional advice about Cadence’s behavior and was advised that it appeared a normal part of the grieving process.
In the second year after the accident, the family began to recover. Cadence was once again attending school after many long absences. Eventually, the girl expressed a desire to return to Beechwood Island. The doctors and other family members agreed: it might be good for her to do just that.
On the island, perhaps, she would finish healing.
81
Remember, don’t get your feet wet. Or your clothes.
Soak the linen cupboards, the towels, the floors, the books and the beds.
Remember, move the gas can away from your kindling so you can grab it.
See it catch, see it burn. Then run. Use the kitchen stairwell and exit out the mudroom door.
Remember, take your gas can with you and return it to the boathouse.
See you at Cuddledown. We’ll put our clothes in the washer there, change, then go and watch the blaze before we call the fire departments.
Those are the last words I said to any of them. Johnny and Mirren went to the top two floors of Clairmont carrying cans of gas and bags of old newspapers for kindling.
I kissed Gat before he went down to the basement. “See you in a better world,” he said to me, and I laughed.
We were a bit drunk. We’d been at the aunties’ leftover wine since they left the island. The alcohol made me feel giddy and powerful until I stood in the kitchen alone. Then I felt dizzy and a little nauseated.
The house was cold. It felt like something that deserved to be destroyed. It was filled with objects over which the aunties fought. Valuable art, china, photographs. All of them fueled family anger. I hit my fist against the kitchen portrait of Mummy, Carrie, and Bess as children, grinning for the camera. The glass on it shattered and I stumbled back.
The wine was muddling my head now. I wasn’t used to it.
The gas can in one hand and the bag of kindling in the other, I decided to get this done as fast as possible. I doused the kitchen first, then the pantry. I did the dining room and was soaking the living room couches when I realized I should have started at the end of the house farthest from the mudroom door. That was our exit. I should have done the kitchen last so I could run out without wetting my feet with gasoline.
Stupid.
The formal door that opened onto the front porch from the living room was soaked already, but there was a small back door, too. It was back by Granddad’s study and led to the walkway down to the staff building. I would use that.
I doused part of the hall and then the craft room, feeling a wave of sorrow for the ruin of Gran’s beautiful cotton prints and colorful yarns. She would have hated what I was doing. She loved her fabrics, her old sewing machine, her pretty, pretty objects.
Stupid again. I had soaked my espadrilles in fuel.
All right. Stay calm. I’d wear them until I was done and then toss them into the fire behind me as I ran outside.
In Granddad’s study I stood on the desk, splashing bookshelves up to the ceiling, holding the gas can far away from me. There was a fair amount of gas left, and this was my last room, so I soaked the books heavily.
Then I wet the floor, piled the kindling on it, and backed into the small foyer that led to the back door. I got my shoes off and threw them onto the stack of magazines. I stepped onto a square of dry floor and set the gas can down. Pulled a matchbook from the pocket of my jeans and lit my paper towel roll.
I threw the flaming roll into the kindling and watched it light. It caught, and grew, and spread. Through the double-wide study doors, I saw a line of flame zip down the hallway on one side and into the living room on the other. The couch lit up.
Then, before me, the bookshelves burst into flames, the gas-soaked paper burning quicker than anything else. Suddenly the ceiling was alight. I couldn’t look away. The flames were terrible. Unearthly.
Then someone screamed.
And screamed again.
It was coming from the room directly above me, a bedroom. Johnny was working on the second floor. I had lit the study, and the study had burned faster than anywhere else. The fire was rising, and Johnny wasn’t out.
Oh no, oh no, oh no. I threw myself at the back door but found it heavily bolted. My hands were slippery with gas. The metal was hot already. I flipped the bolts—one, two, three—but something went wrong and the door stuck.
Another scream.
I tried the bolts again. Failed. Gave up.