The Only One Left by Riley Sager
THIRTY-EIGHT
You must think me a terrible person,” Lenora says after detailing her life away from Hope’s End. Spending two years in France. Drinking in music halls. Mingling with artists. Kissing strangers on the streets of Paris. She met an American serviceman, fell in love, got engaged, was crushed when he died. All those photographs I found in her bedroom were snapshots of that other life.
The one Virginia had dreamed about.
And the one Lenora stole from her.
“Yes.” Even if I lie, she’ll know from the look of repulsion I’m certain is on my face. “You are.”
Terrible. And selfish. And heartless.
Because Lenora didn’t just take the life her sister longed for. She took away the chance for Virginia to have any kind of life at all.
“How could you?” I say. “She was your sister. I know you didn’t like each other. But she was the only family you had left.”
“What else could I have done?”
“Told the truth.”
Lenora slams the glass down, sloshing wine. It spatters the counter like blood. “I tried! No one believed me! In everyone’s mind, Lenora Hope had slaughtered her family. I couldn’t continue to be her. I would have been as much a captive in this house as my sister. And what good would that have done? Virginia couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything. By pushing my identity onto her—”
“Against her will,” I interject.
“Yes, against her will. But by doing that, at least one of us got to enjoy a little freedom. At least one of us got to have a life outside of Hope’s End.”
“Why did you come back?”
“Europe was changing,” Lenora says as she blots at the spilled wine with the cuff of her sleeve, the black fabric sucking up the red liquid. “The storm was gathering, and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before it swept across the continent. I got out and came back here, pretending to be Miss Baker, the prodigal tutor returning to an estate in dire need of her assistance. My sister was Lenora Hope, unfortunate victim of polio and multiple strokes. Because we kept a low profile, no one knew it was all a lie. No one but Archie, who understood the benefit of keeping silent.”
“Why didn’t you leave again after the war?”
“I no longer had the desire,” Lenora says with a shrug. “Or, frankly, the money. What I inherited wasn’t infinite. It’s expensive keeping this place going. And keeping our secrets required additional but necessary costs.”
“Like paying off Berniece Mayhew,” I say.
Lenora nods, grudgingly impressed I know about that. “The night of the murders, she saw me in the kitchen fetching a knife. And no, I did not use it to kill my parents.”
“Then why did you spend so much money making sure Berniece kept quiet?”
“Because even though I’m innocent, her testimony would have been the proof the police needed to charge me with multiple homicides. I knew it, and Berniece knew it, too, so I paid her off. But now the money’s running out. There’s no third act for me. I got away. Not for long. But it was enough.”
“For you, maybe,” I say bitterly. “But Virginia didn’t even get that.”
Lenora crosses her arms and fixes me with one of her frigid stares. “If my sister had wanted—truly wanted—a life like mine, then she wouldn’t have tried to take her own.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dear, how else do you think Virginia ended up dangling from that chandelier?”
Shock rolls through me like thunder. “She hanged herself? How do you know that?”
“There was a chair placed under the chandelier,” Lenora says. “I assume she stood on it to loop the rope around one of the arms of the chandelier. She then tied the rope around her neck and stepped off the chair. The chandelier barely held her.”
I think back to Jessie’s murder tour and how I noticed the slanted chandelier that looked as if it had been jarred out of the ceiling.
“Wasn’t she pregnant?”
“No,” Lenora says, her voice clipped. “Not then.”
I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.
“Why didn’t the police suspect Virginia tried to kill herself if there was a chair there?”
Lenora stares at me, unblinking.
“It wasn’t there when they arrived.”
This time, no elaboration is necessary. I understand exactly what she means—rather than try to help her sister, Lenora moved the chair so the police wouldn’t know Virginia killed herself.
That realization causes me to recoil. I take several backward steps, wanting to put as much distance between us as possible. Until now, I could almost summon some grudging sympathy for Lenora. But this? This was monstrous.
“I did it to protect her,” she says, no doubt knowing what I’m thinking because I make no attempt to hide it.
“How was that protecting her?” I say. “She tried to kill herself and you did nothing but cover it up.”
“If I hadn’t, then the police would have known the truth,” Lenora says, her voice ice cold. “They, like me, would have realized the reason Virginia tried to commit suicide.”
I take another backward step, this one driven purely by shock. “You think Virginia murdered your parents.”
“I know she murdered them.” Lenora’s tone shifts from steely to tremulous, as if it’s being chipped away with a chisel. “Honestly, I’m not surprised, considering what we did to her.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me,” Lenora says, punctuating the word with a sip of wine and a hard swallow. “My father. The real Miss Baker. After what we did, the only surprise is that she didn’t kill us all.”
I gave birth on the floor of my bedroom.
It’s one of the few things I remember.
The baby coming so quickly that there wasn’t time to get onto the bed. So I was forced to lay in the puddle I’d created on the floor, my head knocking against the wall as I writhed in pain.
Another thing I’ll never forget--the sweaty agony of it all. Like I was splitting in half, shedding my skin, being reborn through the fire of pure pain.
I had only my sister and Miss Baker, who rushed in to help after hearing my cries. Neither of them knew what they were doing. So I pushed. I screamed. I hurt.
At some point, exhausted and delirious from pain, I blacked out. My body was still pushing, crying, screaming, and hurting, but my mind was elsewhere. I pictured me and Ricky on a hillside studded with wildflowers and white-capped mountains in the distance. We stood in the sunlight, our child in my arms, as birds in the surrounding pines sang a song meant just for us.
Only when the birdsong turned to crying did I snap back to reality. Mother’s instinct. I knew my child had been born.
And that it needed me.
He needed me.
I saw my child was a boy when my sister returned from the kitchen with a butcher knife she used to cut the umbilical cord. He was so tiny. So fragile. But when I looked at him, I felt a love so fierce it startled me. Nothing else in the world mattered but him. I was his mother, and I knew I would do anything to protect him.
At last, my life had a purpose, which was to love my child more than anything else. That realization was the happiest moment of my life.
That happiness left me the second I saw that my father was also in the room. He’d spent the labor pacing Miss Baker’s room next door, not emerging until he heard my baby crying. As my sister was about to put my son into my arms, he said, “Lenora, take the baby into the other room.”
My sister froze. My child in her arms did not. He wriggled, kicked, and cried. One of his tiny hands reached out for me, as if he already knew I was his mother and that he belonged in my empty arms. I reached out, too, stretching my hand until our fingers touched.
A single second of contact.
That’s all I was allowed.
“Lenora,” my father said, more sternly this time. “Take the child.”
“Can’t she at least hold him?”
My father shook his head. “It’ll only make it worse.”
“But she’s his mother,” my sister said.
“She’s not,” my father replied. “She never had a child. And that baby is not a Hope. None of this happened. Now you’ll either take that bastard into the other room or I’ll take it from you and throw it off the terrace. Then I’ll disown both you and your sister.”
Lenora couldn’t bring herself to look at me as she stood and carried my son out of the room, even as I begged her to stay.
“No, Lenora! Please, please don’t go! Please give him to me!”
I wanted to chase after her, but I couldn’t. My body was too weak. The effort of bringing a new life into the world had sapped all life from me. Still, I tried, continuing to scream.
“Please, Lenora! Let me have my baby!”
But she was already gone, shutting the door between the rooms and blocking out the sound of my child’s cries. Miss Baker grabbed my father by the shoulders and shook him.
“Winston, you can’t do this,” she hissed. “It’s barbaric.”
“It’s for the best,” my father said. “This family can’t afford another scandal.”
“But Virginia is your daughter. Your only legitimate daughter. And if you take that child away from her, you’ll lose her forever.”
“I refuse to have another bastard in this family,” my father said.
“Says a man who’s likely fathered several,” Miss Baker shot back.
Ignoring the remark, my father knelt before me, untouched by my despair. Even as I wept, he said, “I’m sorry, my darling. You brought this on yourself.”
“Please,” I said, my voice weakening as quickly as my body. “Please let me keep him. I’ll be a good girl if you do. I’ll never do anything wrong again.”
My father chucked my chin. “My darling, you’ve done enough wrong to last a lifetime.”
Exhaustion lapped over me in waves so strong I suspected I was dying of heartbreak. I hoped so. Death seemed a better option than this unfathomable grief. Yet I remained alive as Miss Baker dressed me in a fresh nightgown and put me to bed. As she mopped up the mess I’d made on the floor, I listened for the sound of my son in the other room.
All was quiet.
The only one still crying was me.
Miss Baker, done with cleaning, clasped my hand. “Don’t worry, Virginia. I’ll think of something to make him change his mind.”
I was too tired--and too utterly despondent--to reply. Grief and exhaustion had me in their grip, and I felt like I was being pulled into a dark pit from which I’d never emerge. The last thing I heard was Miss Baker saying, “I swear to you, he won’t take that child from you forever.”
She was lying.
I never saw her--or my child--again.
