Author: E. Lockhart
Category: Literature
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Jule needed to think through all this new information, but there was no time. She had to act now.
“I think you must be confusing me with someone else,” she said, keeping the BBC accent. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to trivia night. Let me get my wallet out and I’m sure we’ll get this all sorted right away.”
She faked as if to look into her bag, and in two steps, she was on top of Noa. She kicked the coffee up from underneath. It was still hot and it splashed in the detective’s face.
Noa’s head jerked back, and Jule swung the suitcase hard. It hit Noa in the side of the skull, knocking her to the floor. Jule brought it up again and slammed it down on Noa’s shoulder. Again and again and again. Noa hit the floor and scrabbled for Jule’s ankle with her left hand while she reached toward her pant leg with the right.
Was the woman armed? Yes. She had something strapped to her leg.
Jule stamped her boot down hard on the bones of Noa’s hand. There was a crunching sound and Noa cried out, but her other hand was still trying to grab Jule’s ankle, to tip her off balance.
Jule steadied herself against the wall and kicked Noa in the face. As the detective coiled back, bringing both hands up to protect her eyes, Jule yanked the leg of Noa’s jeans up.
A gun was strapped to Noa’s calf. Jule pulled it off.
She held the gun on Noa and backed away down the hall, dragging her suitcase as she aimed.
When she hit the stairway, Jule turned and ran down it.
Out the back entrance of the inn, she scanned the trash cans and the cars packed in the back lot. There were bicycles leaning against the back of the building.
No. Jule couldn’t take a bike, because she couldn’t leave the suitcase.
Farther down the hill, the street opened onto a plaza with a café.
No, that was too obvious.
Jule ran through the inn’s parking lot. When she turned the corner of the building, she saw a window into a guest room along the side wall. It was tipped open at the top.
Jule looked into the room.
Empty. The bed was made.
She yanked the screen out of the window and threw it into the room. She pushed her suitcase into the open top—it barely fit—and banged it through the cheap venetian blind. She threw her shoulder bag in and vaulted herself over the windowsill. She scraped her skin going over and landed hard on the floor. Then she shut the window, adjusted the blind, threw her things and the detached window screen into the bathroom, and closed herself in there as well.
The inn was the last place Noa would look for her.
Jule sat on the edge of the bathtub and forced herself to breathe slowly. She unzipped the suitcase and pulled out her red wig. She took off her black T-shirt and put on a white top, then slid the wig onto her head and tucked her hair inside. She closed the suitcase.
She picked up the gun and shoved it down the back waistband of her jeans, like she’d seen people do in the movies.
A couple of minutes later, she heard Noa walk past the window of the hotel room. The detective was talking on her phone and moving slow. “I know,” Noa said. “I underestimated the situation, I know that.”
A pause. “It was a lightweight thing, an heiress who ran away, you know?” Noa had stopped walking and was easy to hear. “A silly rich girl on a spree. Evidence so far makes it seem like she and her friend staged a suicide that was gonna let them both live large. The two figured to run off together. They wanted to escape the usual—obsessive ex-boyfriend, controlling parents. The friend thought they were going to share the heiress’s money, but the heiress does the double cross. She takes her friend’s ID as planned, and then she gets rid of the friend entirely….A contract hit’s our best guess, probably in the UK. The friend is now missing, last seen in London back in April. Meanwhile, the heiress, using the friend’s details, runs away with all that money and would be living happy, except the obsessive boyfriend can’t believe she killed herself, so he keeps hounding the police. Finally, they come to think he’s got a point. They look into it, and eventually they find the friend’s credit card being used at this Mexican resort.”
Another pause while Noa listened. “Come on. A girl like that, a Vassar girl, you don’t expect an offensive. No one would. She’s barely five feet tall. She wears three-hundred-dollar sneakers. You can’t call me out on that.”
Another pause, and Noa’s voice began to fade as she walked away. “Well, send somebody, because I need medical attention. The kid has my weapon. Yeah, I know, I know. Just send me some local help, comprende?”
Forrest had sent detectives. Jule understood it now. He had never accepted Immie’s suicide, had suspected Jule from the get-go, and what had all his vigilant questioning turned up? He’d been told that Imogen had committed fraud to get away from him, and that poor, dead Jule had been nothing but a gullible victim.
Jule left the bathroom, crawled across the floor, and crouched beneath the window to look out. Noa was walking down the hill, clutching her arm and shoulder as she went.
There was a supercabos bus coming down the road. Jule grabbed the suitcase and rolled it into the hall, then stepped out of the inn through a side door. She walked calmly onto the edge of the road and put her arm in the air.
The bus stopped.
She breathed.
Noa did not turn.
Jule stepped into the cab of the bus.
Noa still did not turn.
Jule paid her fare, and the doors of the bus closed. A car pulled up to where Noa stood, cradling her broken hand. The detective flashed ID to the person inside.
The bus pulled away in the opposite direction. Jule sat down on the worn seat nearest the driver.
It would stop anywhere she wanted to get off. That was how the supercabos worked. “Quiero ir a la esquina de Ortiz y Ejido. ¿Puedes llevarme cerca de allí?” Jule asked. Ortiz off Ejido—that was where the hotel clerk had told her a guy sold used cars for cash. No questions asked.
The driver nodded.
Jule West Williams leaned forward in her seat.
She had four passports, four driver’s licenses, three wigs, several thousand dollars in cash, and a credit card number belonging to Forrest Smith-Martin that would do for buying plane tickets.
In fact, there were a number of things Jule could do with that Smith-Martin credit card. She could pay Forrest back for all the trouble he’d caused her.
It was tempting.
But she probably wouldn’t bother. Forrest was nothing to Jule, now that she didn’t need to be Imogen Sokoloff any longer.
The last bits of Immie that had been inside her slipped away, like pebbles washed off a shore by a tide going out.
Going forward, Jule would become something else entirely. There would be other bridges to walk across and other dresses to wear. She had changed her accent, had changed her very being.
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 Peña, 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.
Granddad’s only failure was that he never had a son, but no matter. The Sinclair daughters were sunburnt and blessed. Tall, merry, and rich, those girls were like princesses in a fairy tale. They were known throughout Boston, Harvard Yard, and Martha’s Vineyard for their cashmere cardigans and grand parties. They were made for legends. Made for princes and Ivy League schools, ivory statues and majestic houses.
Granddad and Tipper loved the girls so, they couldn’t say whom they loved best. First Carrie, then Penny, then Bess, then Carrie again. There were splashy weddings with salmon and harpists, then bright blond grandchildren and funny blond dogs. No one could ever have been prouder of their beautiful American girls than Tipper and Harris were, back then.
They built three new houses on their craggy private island and gave them each a name: Windemere for Penny, Red Gate for Carrie, and Cuddledown for Bess.
I am the eldest Sinclair grandchild. Heiress to the island, the fortune, and the expectations.
Well, probably.
4
ME, JOHNNY, MIRREN, and Gat. Gat, Mirren, Johnny, and me.
The family calls us four the Liars, and probably we deserve it. We are all nearly the same age, and we all have birthdays in the fall. Most years on the island, we’ve been trouble.
Gat started coming to Beechwood the year we were eight. Summer eight, we called it.
Before that, Mirren, Johnny, and I weren’t Liars. We were nothing but cousins, and Johnny was a pain because he didn’t like playing with girls.
Johnny, he is bounce,
effort, and snark. Back then he would hang our Barbies by the necks or shoot us with guns made of Lego.
Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain. Back then she spent long afternoons with Taft and the twins, splashing at the big beach, while I drew pictures on graph paper and read in the hammock on the Clairmont house porch.
Then Gat came to spend the summers with us.
Aunt Carrie’s husband left her when she was pregnant with Johnny’s brother, Will. I don’t know what happened. The family never speaks of it. By summer eight, Will was a baby and Carrie had taken up with Ed already.
This Ed, he was an art dealer and he adored the kids. That was all we’d heard about him when Carrie announced she was bringing him to Beechwood, along with Johnny and the baby.
They were the last to arrive that summer, and most of us were on the dock waiting for the boat to pull in. Granddad lifted me up so I could wave at Johnny, who was wearing an orange life vest and shouting over the prow.
Granny Tipper stood next to us. She turned away from the boat for a moment, reached in her pocket, and brought out a white peppermint. Unwrapped it and tucked it into my mouth.
As she looked back at the boat, Gran’s face changed. I squinted to see what she saw.
Carrie stepped off with Will on her hip. He was in a baby’s yellow life vest, and was really no more than a shock of white-blond hair sticking up over it. A cheer went up at the sight of him. That vest, which we had all worn as babies. The hair. How wonderful that this little boy we didn’t know yet was so obviously a Sinclair.
Johnny leapt off the boat and threw his own vest on the dock. First thing, he ran up to Mirren and kicked her. Then he kicked me. Kicked the twins. Walked over to our grandparents and stood up straight. “Good to see you, Granny and Granddad. I look forward to a happy summer.”
Tipper hugged him. “Your mother told you to say that, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” said Johnny. “And I’m to say, nice to see you again.”