For You and Only You (You, #4)

by Caroline Kepnes

She’s a part-time member of humanity. Her permanent residence is her fiction.

She lied to Shayna from Chronicle when she said that her dream was to solve a real-life cold case. She lied because she was trying to sound like a human. It’s what all psychopaths do when the cameras are rolling. This is her true dream. To write a book that forces all the Substack Stephens of this world to their knees, to revere her. And she thinks she’s on her way. She’s like you. Tick tick tap tap tick. Winners keep winning—she’ll probably get a blurb from Lauren Groff—but what about me? What about you? What about us?

It’s…one way to look at my book. A little limited if you ask me—the sex is only graphic because it’s metaphorical and there’s not that much of it—and she sighs. “We can get a lot for this, you know. It’s commercial gold.” It’s literary gold. “I wasn’t expecting a big advance.”

She’s a homebody widow, fearless and spoiled as an indoor cat.

fast-forwarding through all the faces, so red, so white. No dice, no fucking Colton, so I google The Fucking Good Life but it’s a popular name for a boat—there is no way to fix this country, we are way beyond the fiberglass pale—and it’s back to fucking Twitter, where it’s another bust—Colton never mentioned Sly again—but it’s not a total bust. He has a sister, and his sister is younger, not so private. Her name is the golden ticket.

Kathryn Fucking Hornblower. Four hours ago, I would have assumed Kathryn plays a wind instrument, but I’ve gone native enough to know that Hornblower is an actual surname. Kathryn

The sun shines cold and Cool 102 calms me with commercial-free yacht rock and Kenny Loggins smiles and tells me I’m the lucky one as I cross the Cape Cod Canal and soon I’m here, and the village of Osterville is a postcard and Stop signs are slowing me down but Bonnie Tyler has my back—Forever’s gonna start tonight—and the fairy-tale trees bend to the will of the wealthy, their bare branches forming a canopy—Hands touching hands—and I take a left onto Causeway Lane. The photos in the seven-page glossy spread about “the Houses of the Hornblowers” in Architectural Digestion didn’t do it justice. They didn’t give context, they didn’t explain that the compound, where “Berlin meets Cape Cod Bay,” is badass. Three three-story houses flip the bird to all the cookie-cutter Cape Codders I passed on the way here. This is where the cool kids live, and this is where you’ve lived. I hit the brakes. Are

I have a whole new preppy yachty wardrobe of corduroy pants and fisherman’s sweaters I bought on Main Street—an actual cutesy fucking Main Street—and you tear tags off Lilly Pulitzer pink and purple shirts that replace your grungy Red Sox garb and I love you like this, no longer treating your body like a billboard for a bunch of ballers who don’t deserve you.

Every day that we’re here, we drink from this well of confidence that we both knew was always there, a well we ignored, as if we needed it to be dry. It’s filling up, and I agree with what you said last night, that the government should find a way to give all kids who grow up without privileges the chance to be the Hornblowers because let’s face it, Wonder. We’re blowing those Hornblowers out of the water. We are good at this life, at this house. We appreciate what they have in a way they probably can’t, because it’s all theirs.

Each morning, we share a civilized morning sup in the breakfast nook in the kitchen in your house—this is how the good wealthy lord intended it, a nook for every meal—and then I walk through the tunnel from your house to my house—I chose the one with a view of the pet cemetery.

night, when we went into the little village for something called a Christmas stroll.

know you did, because on the way home, we stopped at the library (closed), where Adirondack chairs were just fucking sitting there. You were stunned—The trust—and we rocked in those chairs, and we fucked in those chairs, and we know it can’t last forever—the chances of all seven Hornblowers dying in a private jet crash are low—but it’s like you said this morning.

She sounds paranoid. You hear it, too. This is good. The calmer I am, the crazier she’ll seem—it’s Gaslighting 101—and I laugh like I’m offended, because who wouldn’t be offended?

You wait a week to review a book after you finish it because reactions are not reviews.

Forgery is a means to an end, and when done well, it’s inspiring. Look at Lee Israel. She got fed up with publishing and made a boatload of cash forging all the great authors. Oh sure, she got jammed up in prison, but eventually she told her story in a memoir, and her book became a movie starring Melissa Fucking McCarthy. Can You Ever Forgive Me? Well, yes, Ms. Israel. Yes, we can.

It’s winter. It’s cold. If it were summer, I could put her body out to sea. The metaphor would really fly if she was found in the ocean because the ocean is connected to the earth, to the mountains where Glenn died, but what can you do? We are powerless as writers. This part of our story takes places in December and Sly Caron doesn’t even like the ocean. She likes hot tubs.

“I believe in myself, in my intuition. It’s called faith, Joe.” Another misunderstood word—it’s called magical delusional thinking—and you run your fingers through your hair and look around the sitting room. You have no idea where you are, that you’re in a cage. “She sure is taking a long time up there.”

“You don’t love ‘me.’ You’re a serial monogamist. You like to freaking ‘love.’ It’s not about me, or any of all your girls. It’s about you, Joe. You loved this one and that one and you lugged that ex-box all the way up here because for all your ‘loner’ bullshit, for all your bravado about how you don’t need people, you don’t talk to your own mother and you’re fine with it…You whine about me being too close to my family, who are you to talk? You’re never alone.

You won’t go to New York but now you’re flying to Memphis and I’m the unreliable narrator. LOLOL. “Memphis, huh? With your dad and your sister and Caridad?”

“And that’s how you define the value of a person? A character? By what they do for other people?” “Well, yeah. ‘Show me the friend and I’ll show you the man.’ ” “That’s a new one…” “It’s from Army Wives,” you snap. “My sister was into it and it’s freaking true about people but just…never mind.” “Wonder, have you ever been to therapy?” “Fuck you.”

“Wonder, in therapy one of the first things you learn is that you come first, that there’s no shame in caring about yourself more than anything else on this planet, because you’re alive, you’re worth it.” “Well, that’s what I’m saying, Joe. You can’t help anyone if you’re not well.” “No,” I say. “You’re the end goal. You. Not the people you help. You.” “I’m sad for you, Joe. That’s sad.” “Wonder, what does Alice want?” “She wants to be a good person.” “Bullshit. What does Alice want for herself?” “She wants to know that she did the best she could for her family.” “What does Alice want that’s just for Alice?” “Are

And he looks the tiger in the eye…‘But you finally got to be a tiger, Caesar.’ It’s bittersweet, but Caesar got to have one honest moment after a life wasted in a cage.” That’s you—you’re in a cage on Sesame Street—but you cling to your simpleton perspective. You rant about animals dying as if animals in books aren’t fictional. And then you shake your head. “I give up. If you like that scene…you’re a fucking psychopath.” I KILLED TWO PEOPLE FOR YOU. I’M A LOVER. A HERO. THE OPPOSITE OF A PSYCHOPATH. “Wonder, the tiger got to be a tiger. Why does that scare you so much?”