The Only One Left by Riley Sager

THIRTY

An opportunity to sneak Lenora outside presents itself two days later, when everyone else at Hope’s End leaves to attend the funeral of Mary Milton.

Although the mood is solemn, the weather is anything but. It’s a gorgeous autumn day—perhaps the last one of the season. Sun floods the sky, throwing off rays that take the sting out of the October chill. The cloudless sky is so blue it reminds me of sapphires. The Atlantic is calm, and for once the wind decides to take the day off.

Not that the weather matters. Even if a hurricane was blowing through, I’d take Lenora outside when given the chance. For the past two days, she continued to be mostly unresponsive, tapping out answers only when necessary. The result was long days of tense silence and uninterrupted boredom. The two of us simply sat, doing nothing. After that, even I’m eager to get outdoors.

I haven’t told anyone else about my plan. Not even Lenora. I was tempted to tell Carter, but I opted not to just to be on the safe side. The last thing I want to do is run the risk of Mrs. Baker finding out and putting a stop to it.

I watch from the top of the Grand Stairs as the others gather to leave, Archie and Carter in dark suits, Jessie going against the grain in a white wrap dress, and Mrs. Baker wearing what she normally does, with the addition of a wide-brimmed hat and cat’s-eye sunglasses. As soon as they’re gone, I rush to Lenora’s room.

It startles her when I begin to push her wheelchair toward the door. Her left hand flies off the armrest, flapping like the wing of a frightened bird. She looks up at me, her face a giant question mark.

“You’re getting your wish,” I say before wheeling her out of her room. “But then you need to hold up your end of the bargain, okay?”

She happily taps twice on the armrest.

“Good,” I say. “Let’s go.”

I back the wheelchair out of the room. When we pass into the hall, Lenora lets out a huff of awe. It sounds like the relieved exhalation of someone who’s been holding her breath a long, long time. Her eyes widen as we move backward down the hallway, trying to take in everything all at once. The carpet, the wallpaper, every door we pass. It makes me wonder how long it’s been since she last left her room. Months? Years? Decades?

Because the service stairs are too narrow for her wheelchair, I have no choice but to use the Grand Stairs. My first thought is to try to hoist Lenora over one shoulder and carry her down the steps and out the door. Good in theory, perhaps, but difficult in practice. I know my limits. Even if I can somehow manage to carry her all the way down the Grand Stairs, getting her back up will be twice as hard. My only choice is to slowly back the wheelchair down each step and hope for the best.

“Hold on,” I warn. “It’s about to get bumpy.”

I tilt the wheelchair, say a little prayer, and slowly pull it down the first step. The impact jostles Lenora so hard I worry she’s about to fall out.

“Keep going?”

Lenora unclenches her left hand from the armrest and responds with a hearty double tap.

The next few steps are just as rough, but I soon find my groove. Going fast, ironically, is better than going slow. Rather than stopping and starting step by jarring step, I lower the wheelchair to the landing in one continuous pull. Lenora shimmies like a bowl of Jell-O the whole time, but at least she’s not almost knocked out of the chair. I do it again on the way to the ground floor, the chair settling onto the tile in a shuddering thud.

“You okay?” I ask Lenora.

She looks back at me with unabashed glee. Her green eyes dance, and a blush of joy paints her cheeks. If she could laugh, I suspect she’d be cackling right now.

We head toward the dining room, doing a quick spin around the massive table there and passing the equally large fireplace before heading to the French doors. I fling them open and make sure there’s a clear path for the wheelchair.

More slate shingles have fallen from the roof in the past two days. A veritable rainfall of them. Each day, Jessie and Carter have swept them up, only to have more appear in the morning. Today, the terrace is clean of them, allowing me to see fresh cracks crisscrossing its marble surface. Not a good sign. But also not enough to keep me from granting Lenora’s single wish.

I return to the wheelchair. Before emerging onto the terrace, Lenora reaches out to me with her left hand. I take it, feeling the rush of her pulse beneath the skin.

Then I lead her outside.

The wind, sunshine, and sea air hit us all at once. Lenora gasps, delighted. I bring her to the edge of the terrace, stopping only when her knees touch the railing. Closing her eyes, she tilts her face to the sky and basks in the sun. Her hair catches the wind, the gray tendrils streaming in the breeze. Seeing her so ecstatic about something as simple as being outside makes me both sad that she can’t enjoy this on a regular basis and furious at Mrs. Baker for confining her indoors.

I stand beside Lenora, leaning on the railing, watching the waves far below. While certainly lovely, it’s not much different than the view she gets from her bedroom windows. Because there’s so much risk involved—and because it might never happen again—I want her to experience something different. Something special.

“Lenora,” I say, “when was the last time you got to lie down in the grass and look up at the clouds?”

I know the answer, even if Lenora can’t provide it. Decades.

I guide the wheelchair to the end of the terrace, pull it down the steps to the lawn, and, careful to stay far away from the new, unimproved cliff’s edge, park it in the grass. I then lift Lenora out of her chair and lower her until she’s on her back, facing the sky. I lie down next to her, and together we stare at the endless blue overhead.

We stay like that for a long time. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. I’m not sure because I doze off, lulled to sleep by the wind, waves, and sunshine. Nights at Hope’s End haven’t gotten any easier. I’m still having nightmares of my mother and still hearing sounds from Lenora’s room that, when I inevitably get out of bed to check, end up being nothing. I wake each morning exhausted, blinking in the harsh light of sunrise and finding a mattress slid slightly lower than the morning before it.

Now, though, I awake to the sun higher in the sky and Lenora next to me, taking deep, contented breaths.

“It’s time to talk about the baby,” I say.

Lenora’s breathing stops. A sign she doesn’t want to. But she must. Even though I don’t want to ruin her special outing, she needs to hold up her end of the bargain. When she exhales, I say, “Was the baby born?”

I sit up, watching her left hand as it taps twice against the ground.

“A boy or a girl?” I say, even though I know Lenora can’t answer by tapping. I rephrase the question. “Was it a girl?”

One tap.

“So it was a boy.”

Lenora nods this time, a flicker of a smile crossing her face. It quickly fades when I say, “What happened to him? Did he die?”

One tap.

“Did you give him away?”

One tap.

My heart sinks. I don’t want to ask the next question. After a pause, I say, “Was he taken away?”

Lenora pauses as well, waiting a good thirty seconds before she taps the ground once, twice.

“Do you know what happened to him after that?”

After another long pause, I receive only a single tap from Lenora.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, closing my eyes to hold back tears that have suddenly formed. I can’t imagine being that young, getting pregnant, giving birth, and then having the baby taken from me. It’s beyond cruel. It’s horrific.

I open my eyes to see that Lenora’s expression hasn’t changed. It’s a blank mask facing the sky, hiding the deep pain that’s surely present all these years later. If it turns out Carter really is her grandson, maybe some of that pain will ease. I hope so.

“Before she died, did Mary draw blood from your arm?”

Lenora taps twice, confirming my suspicion about the cause of the bruise on her left arm.

“Did she tell you why?”

One tap.

“But she knew about the baby, right? You told her?”

Two taps.

“Just like you also told her who killed your parents and sister.”

Another two taps, slower this time.

“There’s a reason you haven’t told me yet,” I say, because there must be. She’s typed nothing for almost three days. In that time, she could have revealed all. Hell, she could have done it my first night here. One sentence is all it would take.

“Are you ever going to tell me?”

Lenora hesitates, her left hand hovering over the ground, as if she’s not sure of the answer. I feel the same way. Also hovering. Also uncertain. As much as I need to know the truth, I’m also cognizant of the danger it might put me in. If Lenora finally tells me and someone else finds out, I could end up just like Mary.

I stare across the grass to the edge of the cliff. No railing there. Just a straight, screaming drop into the ocean. Lenora’s aware of it, too, even though she can’t see it from where she lies. There’s no way to miss its presence. It pulls at us, daring us to come closer, peer over the edge, tempt fate.

It dawns on me that’s what I’ve been doing since the moment I arrived at Hope’s End. Edging toward the forbidden. Looking at things I shouldn’t see, poking at things that shouldn’t be poked. All because of a misguided hope that proving Lenora’s innocence might somehow make me look innocent as well.

Her left hand finally taps the ground.

Just once.

No.

Seeing it sends anger sparking through my body. “But you promised.”

Lenora winces, as if she regrets that. I don’t care. We had a deal. I take her outside—not an easy task—and she finally tells me everything. I’m damn well going to hold her to it.

“You need to uphold your end of the bargain.”

Lenora gives the ground an adamant single tap.

“Yes,” I say. “Right now.”

I stand as Lenora steadily raps her fist against the grass, making her stance crystal clear. No, no, no. I ignore it, even as I understand all the obvious reasons she doesn’t want to tell me.

Mary.

Her missing suitcase.

Her corpse buried in the sand.

The big difference between Mary’s situation and mine is that she left with Lenora’s story when others were here, mistakenly believing the cover of night would keep her safe. But right now, in broad daylight, there’s no one else at Hope’s End. It’s just me and Lenora and an opportunity to finish what we started.

I’m ready to tempt fate one last time.

And Lenora’s going to be along for the ride whether she wants to or not.

I run back into the house, take the service stairs two at a time, and burst into Lenora’s room. At the desk, I grab a fresh sheet of paper and roll it into the typewriter carriage. Because Lenora might use more than one piece, I take a whole stack, setting the paper on top of the typewriter before hoisting it off the desk.

Carrying the typewriter down the stairs is harder than moving it to Lenora’s bed. The greater distance puts more strain on my arms, and the typewriter feels heavier with each passing step. To keep the blank pages on top from slipping, I bend forward and use my chin as a paperweight. At the service stairs, I realize I can’t see where I’m going. I take each step slowly, dropping blindly from one to the next. At one point I misstep and knock into the cracked wall, jostling loose a chunk of plaster that falls onto the staircase. I crunch over it on my way to the bottom.

After clearing the stairs, I shuffle through the kitchen, the typewriter getting heavier and heavier. My arms feel like jelly. My legs do, too. In the dining room, I huff a sigh of relief when I realize I never closed the French doors on my way inside. That’s at least one thing I won’t need to deal with. Tired and heaving, I carry the typewriter onto the terrace.

Lenora’s there.

Not on the grass, where I’d left her, but right there on the terrace, sitting in her wheelchair and staring at the sea.

“How did you—”

My voice leaves me when I see them.

Mrs. Baker and Archie, Carter and Jessie. They all stand off to the side of the terrace, their expressions as varied as their personalities. Carter’s is concerned. Jessie looks mildly surprised. Archie’s face is blank. And Mrs. Baker? She’s pissed.

Clearly busted, I lower the typewriter. The blank pages come loose and catch the breeze. I watch them swirl and skid across the terrace before taking flight.

Over the railing.

Off the cliff.

Into the churning water far below.

My mother would have died if I hadn’t entered her room, a fact made clear by Dr. Walden, the family physician. What wasn’t clear was if she drank all the laudanum by accident or did it on purpose. Everyone else swore it had to have been accidental. I, on the other hand, assumed my mother intended to take her own life. She remained silent on the matter, making it more uncertain.

Dr. Walden, either through stupidity or greed, continued to keep the laudanum flowing, using the excuse that cutting my mother off all at once would cause more harm than good. He recommended weaning her off the substance slowly.

As a result, nothing changed. Life at Hope’s End quickly returned to the way it had always been. My mother remained wasting away in her room, my father was frequently gone on business, and my sister pretended nothing was wrong by filling her social calendar.

The only thing that changed was me. By the end of September, my pregnancy was showing more and more. That I had managed to hide it for so long was a small miracle accomplished only through craftiness on my part and inattentiveness on the part of everyone else.

But time was running out. I knew that soon it would be impossible to hide. Until that day came, however, I was determined to keep it a secret from my family.

Yet there was only so much I could do on my own. Food, for example, became a problem. I was ravenous all day and night, prompting a weight gain too noticeable to escape even my father’s lax attention. He put me on a diet so strict it wasn’t fit for a woman of any condition, let alone one who was eating for two. I needed someone besides Archie to sneak proper meals to me.

It was the same with clothing. My mother’s maid continued to let out my dresses, tsking at each request to alter yet another garment. I needed new clothes designed to better hide my pregnancy, which I couldn’t just sneak out and buy for myself. Someone else had to do it for me.

Then there was the matter of my health. I hadn’t seen a doctor since becoming pregnant. I spent nights lying awake worrying about how I didn’t know if something was wrong with the baby. But I didn’t dare approach Dr. Walden about an examination. I needed to see a new doctor. A stranger. One who would remain silent about my condition.

If the two of us had shared a typical bond, I would have turned to my sister for help. I’d always hated that we weren’t close, always assuming it was my fault instead of hers. In truth, it was no one’s fault. We were simply different. There was a gulf in our personalities that was too wide to overcome. I was like my mother, always feeling too much, wanting too much, needing too much. Like my father, my sister had wants and needs, too, but they were surface pleasures. Cars and clothes and societal approval from snobs just like them. They held no emotion other than ambition.

Without my sister to depend on, I required help from a member of the household staff. Someone discreet. Someone who knew how to keep a secret.

The only person I could think of was the one you’d least expect.

My father’s mistress.

That’s how I found myself standing in the southern hall on the last day of September. My father had returned from Boston the day before, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him. His mood was foul at dinner as he and my sister enjoyed a full meal while I picked at a salad designed to, in his words, “restore my girlish figure.”

After dinner, he retreated to the sunroom. A few minutes later, I followed, creeping toward the end of the hall. Noises rose from behind the sunroom’s closed doors. My father’s low chuckle and the high-pitched peal of a woman’s laugh. A laugh that wasn’t my mother’s. Even if it sounded the same, which it didn’t, I knew it wasn’t her because she was currently upstairs in her room, likely taking yet another swig from her bottle of laudanum.

I snuck down the hall, which had turned gloomy in the evening dusk. I could barely make out the portraits as I passed. That was for the best. I had zero desire to look at them.

Father. Mother. Two dutiful daughters.

All of it was a lie.

Upon reaching the sunroom, I held my breath, fearful one small exhalation would expose my presence. I stood outside the door, listening to my father’s groaning and panting, disgusted by his animalistic needs. It didn’t occur to me then that they were the same sounds Ricky made when we were together. Only later did I realize all men were alike. It didn’t matter if they were rich or poor, fat or thin, old or young. Their needs were so basic it was laughable.

Once the passionate moaning had ended, I hurried away to the library, pretending to read a book in case my father looked in as he passed. He didn’t, of course. He simply strode by, sated, on his way to another part of the house.

It wasn’t until I heard his mistress leave the sunroom that I sprang from my chair and ran to the doorway, ready to intercept her.

I expected to see someone like Sally, the voluptuous new maid, or even brittle, bitter Berniece Mayhew. Instead, the woman who emerged from the sunroom smoothing her skirts was the person I least expected to be engaged in an affair with my father.

Frozen in shock, I could only stand in the middle of the hallway and stare at her. She stared back, also surprised.

“You?” I said.

“Yes,” Miss Baker replied with a weary huff. “Me.”