The Only One Left by Riley Sager

NINETEEN

I lead the way, guiding Detective Vick up the Grand Stairs.

“Watch the bloodstains,” I say dryly as we climb. I swerve around them. Detective Vick walks right over them, not breaking stride. A disappointment. I was hoping he’d react the same way I did the first time I noticed them.

I do get a reaction at the top of the stairs, though. Stepping onto the landing, the detective immediately reaches for the wall and says, “Whoa.”

“The mansion’s tilted,” I tell him, as if I’ve been here years and not mere days.

“Is that safe?” Detective Vick says.

“Probably not.”

“Man, it wasn’t like this last time I was here.”

I stop in the middle of the hallway. “What do you mean?”

“I used to work here.” Detective Vick removes his hand from the wall, thinks better of it, slaps it back onto the blue damask. “Just for one summer, plus some weekends that spring and fall. Mr. Hope used to hire boys from town when things got busy.”

“When was this?”

“It was 1929,” the detective says. “I remember because of the murders.”

“So you know Lenora?”

“Only from a distance.”

I start off down the hall again, talking over my shoulder to a still-wobbly Detective Vick. “Is that why you became a detective?”

“Because I spent a summer working in a place where there was a triple homicide?” Detective Vick chuckles, as if he finds the idea preposterous. “It was more than that, I can assure you. Detective work’s a calling. It’s in our blood to find the people who do bad things and make them pay.”

Even though I walk ahead of him, I know the detective is shooting daggers at me. I can feel his stare burning the back of my neck. No doubt he thinks I’m someone who did a bad thing and managed to get away.

For now.

I turn left into Lenora’s room, where she sits in her wheelchair, the Walkman in her lap and earphones on her head. My sudden arrival with a stranger startles her. Her left hand flutters against the blanket laid over her lap and her green eyes go wide.

She’d spent most of the day with Archie or Mrs. Baker as I waited downstairs in the sunroom. And while I’m not sure which one of them told Lenora what happened to Mary, it’s clear she knows. Once the surprise fades, her eyes shimmer with grief.

Outside, the storm clouds have gotten darker and more menacing, plunging the bedroom into a gloom that feels both suffocating and appropriate.

“Lenora,” I say as I go to her side. “This is Detective Vick. He’d like to ask you some questions about Mary. Is that okay?”

Lenora stares at him, uncertain. She looks so hesitant that I expect her response to be no. I’m surprised when, after a few more seconds of contemplation, she taps twice against her lap.

“Two taps mean yes,” I explain to Detective Vick. “One means no.”

The detective nods and approaches Lenora the way I first did—with awestruck trepidation. From the way he talked in the sunroom, I suspect the detective thinks Lenora is guilty as sin. Still, he kneels beside her wheelchair on legs made unsteady from the slanted floor and says, “Hi, Lenora. I’m sorry about Mary. I heard the two of you were close?”

Rather than tap out an answer, she gives a slow, sad nod.

“So you liked her?”

Lenora returns to tapping, giving two quick raps.

“And Mary liked you?”

Another two taps.

“How was she as a nurse?” Detective Vick shakes his head. “Sorry. There’s no way for you to answer that.”

“There is.” To Lenora, I say, “You feel like typing your answers?”

Before she can tap a response, I wheel Lenora to the desk and insert a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter. I place her left hand on the keys and turn to Detective Vick.

“She can’t type very fast, so try to ask her things that only require short answers.”

“Uh, sure.” The detective rubs his hands together, uncertain. I can only assume this is the first time he’s questioned someone via typewriter. “Lenora, when was the last time you saw Mary?”

Lenora blinks, confused.

“He wants you to type your answer,” I say, gently prodding her.

Instead of typing, Lenora stares at the typewriter as if she’s never seen one before. She lifts her hand, hovering it uncertainly over the keys before dropping it back down. The force of the landing hits a key hard enough to slap a single, faint letter onto the blank page.

h

“Do you need my help?” I ask her.

Simmering with impatience, Detective Vick says, “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

I look to Lenora. Normally so expressive, her face has taken on a frustrating blankness. It dawns on me that this could be too much for her. Mary’s death. The detective’s presence. All his questions. I kneel next to her, put my hand over hers, and say, “Are you too upset about Mary to type?”

Beneath my palm, Lenora curls her hand into a fist and raps the keyboard once.

“Then why aren’t you doing it?”

“Do you even know how to type?” Detective Vick asks her.

Again, Lenora gives another single rap.

Outside, a gust of wind slams against the mansion, making the whole room—including those of us in it—shudder. Drops of rain smack the windows as the wind howls.

The storm has arrived.

With it comes another shudder. One only I can feel. An internal shimmy brought on by a single realization.

Lenora is pretending.

Detective Vick kneels on the other side of her wheelchair. He shoots me an annoyed look and asks Lenora, “Just to be clear, Miss McDeere is lying about you being able to type?”

This time, Lenora raises her hand and taps the typewriter twice.

My stomach drops. “She can,” I say. “I swear.”

I give Lenora a desperate stare, as if she can confirm what I just said any other way besides actually pressing one of the typewriter keys. But she can’t. And she won’t. For reasons I don’t understand.

The storm’s at full force now. Water pours down the windowpanes, casting undulating patterns on the bedroom floor. I watch them, furious at Lenora for making me look like a liar, wondering why she’s doing it, and trying to think of some way to prove I’m right. That’s when it hits me.

“We typed this morning,” I say. “Before I found Mary. The page is right here on the desk.”

I search the desk for the page I know was still in the typewriter when I went downstairs to call Mr. Gurlain. I even remember the words that had been typed on it—Lenora telling me her dead sister was in this room.

But the page isn’t on the desk.

It doesn’t seem to be anywhere.

“It was just here,” I say, scanning a desktop that contains nothing but a typewriter and a lamp.

“There wasn’t a page in the typewriter,” Detective Vick says, maybe trying to be helpful but coming off smug instead. “Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

“I’m sure.” I start opening desk drawers, searching for the page that bore Virginia’s name. It’s not in any of them. Nor is it on the floor. I look to Lenora and say, “You know it was here.”

Her left hand remains atop the typewriter keys, motionless and seemingly useless.

“Tell him I’m not lying, Lenora,” I say, my voice sliding perilously close to outright begging. “Please.”

Detective Vick stands, grabs me by the wrist, and drags me into the hallway, seething.

“Is this some kind of game to you, Kit? Because I didn’t believe a word of what you said about your mother, you’ve decided to toy with me?”

“I’m not toying with you,” I say. “Lenora does know how to type. We spent all of yesterday doing it. She’s been telling me what happened the night her family was murdered. I think she plans on either confessing or telling me who really did it.”

“That’s insane, Kit. The woman can barely sit up. Do you seriously expect me to believe that Lenora Hope is typing her goddamn life story?”

“But it’s the truth!”

“Sure,” Detective Vick says, dripping sarcasm. “Let’s go with that. But why now? After so many years, why has she decided to tell you, of all people, what happened that night?”

“I don’t know. But she has told me things.” The words tumble out in a mad rush, so desperate am I to have Detective Vick believe me about something. “About the months leading up to the murders. About her family. And her sister. She said the ghost of her sister has been in her room.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

“No,” I say, because I don’t. Not really. Not yet, anyway. “But I do think something is wrong with this place. It’s . . . not right.”

Detective Vick takes a step back and stares at me, his anger dissolving into something else. It looks like pity.

“We’re done talking, Kit,” he says as he pulls a business card from his pocket and presses it into my hand. “Call me if you ever feel like telling the truth.”

He stalks off down the hall toward the Grand Stairs. I march back into Lenora’s room. Seeing her at the desk, now in full typewriting mode, makes me break one of the cardinal rules of a Gurlain Home Health Aides employee—no swearing at patients.

“What the fuck was that about?”

Lenora, exuding the patience of a saint, nods for me to join her. She then types two words.

im sorry

“You should be. You made me look like a complete liar in front of the detective.”

i had to

“Why?”

it must be a secret

“You knowing how to type needs to be a secret?” I say. “From whom?”

everyone

It would have been nice to know that before I invited Detective Vick up to her room. Now that I do know—and now that I’ve completely blown my chance of him ever believing me about anything—I feel compelled to ask the same questions I think he would have posed.

“Did Mary tell you she was leaving?”

Lenora taps once on the keyboard.

“The last time you saw her, how did she act?”

Lenora starts typing, stops to give it some thought, starts over. The result is a strange beast of a word.

weirnervous

I study the word, which is a pretty accurate summation of my own current state. “Which is it? Weird or nervous?”

both, Lenora types.

“Had she been acting this way for a while?”

Lenora taps the keyboard twice. Yes.

“Did Mary ever mention hearing strange noises at night?”

She gives the keyboard two more taps. Another yes.

I’m hit with a memory of what Jessie told me my first night here.

I think she was scared. Hope’s End isn’t a normal house. There’s a darkness here. I can feel it. Mary did.

Even though Jessie assured me it was a joke, I’m now starting to think it wasn’t. Not entirely.

“Do you know if she ever found out what they were?” I say.

Rather than tap, Lenora types out her answer.

no

“And that’s what made her weird and nervous?”

Lenora bangs out two more words.

and scared

My heart hiccups in my chest. So it is true. Maybe Jessie knew because Mary told her or maybe she just subconsciously suspected something was amiss. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that something at Hope’s End frightened Mary Milton.

“What was she scared of, Lenora?”

I watch Lenora’s hand slide over the keyboard in a way similar to the planchette on Jessie’s Ouija board. Eight keys and one press of the space bar later, I see the answer I’d been expecting all along.

my sister

My sister knew I was in love. Sisters can tell such things. Even ones who never get along, which certainly was the case for the two of us.

“Who is it?” she asked on one of those rare occasions we found ourselves in the same room at the same time. Usually we managed to steer clear of each other. But that night we both chose to occupy ourselves in the library.

“I have no idea who you’re referring to,” I replied as I sat by the fireplace, reading one of my mother’s romance novels that I ordinarily would have found beneath me. I wanted to write serious literature and normally read only that. I started to feel differently once I fell in love with Ricky.

And it was love.

Love at first sight, to use the cliche. In my case, though, it was true. The moment I saw Ricky, I knew I was in love with him. It was impossible not to feel that way. Not only was he the most handsome man I’d ever seen, but he understood me in a way no one else did. I could tell from the way he looked at me. He didn’t see a wealthy man’s spoiled daughter, content with flirting and flouncing about in pretty dresses. He saw a young, intelligent woman with hopes, dreams, ambition.

He saw the person I wanted myself to be.

“You’re so different from the rest of your family,” he told me that first night, after we’d spent an hour talking on the terrace.

“In a good way, I hope,” I said.

“In a wonderful way.”

I let him kiss me then. My first kiss. It was greater than I ever dreamed it could be. When his lips touched mine, it felt as if my entire existence was exploding like a firework. Bright and sparkling and white hot.

I pulled away, short of breath and blushing. For a moment, I thought I was going to faint. I swooned against the terrace railing, dizzy. I likely would have fallen over if Ricky hadn’t caught me in his arms and whispered, “When can I see you again?”

“Tomorrow night,” I whispered back, as if I were Juliet and he my Romeo, meeting at my balcony. “Right here.”

Two weeks had passed since then, and the two of us saw each other every night. We’d meet on the terrace and rush off somewhere we couldn’t be found. When we were together, the world melted away, turning everything to sheer bliss. When we were apart, he was all I thought about, dreamed about, cared about.

We kissed again the second night we met, this time without restraint. We were by the cottage, half hidden in shadow, telling each other our dreams and our disappointments. I told Ricky about wanting to flee to Paris, living like a bohemian, experiencing everything and then writing it down.

Ricky told me how, through tough times and hard luck, he came to work here. “My family is piss-poor,” he said, using a term that both shocked and thrilled me with its crudeness. “My mother died when she had me. My father’s a mean drunk who’d rather beat me than work. I learned right fast that school was useless. Money beats knowledge every single time. Since I’m good with my hands, I came here.”

He sighed and looked up at the sky. “I want more than this, I can tell you that. It’s crushing, not having the life you’re meant to live. It weighs a man down.”

I tried to alleviate that weight the only way I knew how, by letting Ricky wrap his thick arms around my waist, pull me close, and kiss me as passionately as he wanted.

We were still kissing when I heard the whisper of footfalls in the grass. It was Berniece, returning home from her duties in the kitchen. I broke away and fled before we could be caught. But that close call didn’t change anything. I knew that what Ricky and I were doing was wrong, but I didn’t care. I longed for the fireworks his kiss created. I needed them.

We grew more daring with each meeting. Kissing, touching, exploring. On the third night, when Ricky’s hand moved to my breast, I let it remain there. On the fourth night, I slipped my hand into his trousers and grasped his manhood. I’ll spare you the sordid details, but it progressed like that until, exactly one week after the night we met, I allowed Ricky to take my virginity.

When it was over, I laid in his arms and whispered, “I love you.”

Ricky grinned and said, “I love you, too.”

In that moment, I became a woman. I suspect that was the change my sister saw in me that night in the library.

“You’re clearly mad about someone,” she said. “And I know who it is.”

I looked up from my book, numb with worry. Had Berniece seen us? Did she know? Was she now telling others?

“What have you heard?”

“Nothing,” my sister said. “But it’s obvious you’re in love with Archibald.”

I struggled not to laugh as relief poured over me. So many things prevented Archie and me from being together, starting with the fact that he felt more like a sibling to me than my own sister did.

“It’s not Archie,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you still carry a torch for Peter. It’s hopeless. He has no interest in you.”

“Or you.”

“He’ll come around,” my sister said. “I’m certain of it. Then we’ll marry and spend the rest of our days here.”

“At Hope’s End?”

My sister spread her arms wide, as if trying to embrace the house itself. “Of course. I’m never going to leave this place.”

“But there’s a whole world out there you haven’t yet seen,” I said. “I, for one, intend to explore as much of it as I can.”

“With your secret boyfriend?” My sister smiled at me, a look I’d seen so many times that it rarely registered how vicious it could be. Her smile contained neither humor nor warmth. It was as cold and calculating as the girl it belonged to. “You should just go ahead and tell me who he is now. You know I’m going to find out at some point.”

In the end, she was right.

She eventually did find out, and disaster soon followed.

At least she also got her wish. All these years later, she’s still here, roaming the halls. And she’s never going to leave.

As long as Hope’s End still stands, my sister will remain.