The Only One Left by Riley Sager

FOUR

The inside of Hope’s End is nicer than the outside, but only slightly. Just beyond the door is a grand foyer with marble tile, velvet drapes at the windows, and tapestries on the walls. The furnishings range from potted palms to fancy wooden chairs with dusty cushions under brocade pillows. Overhead, an oil-painted sky full of puffy-pink clouds adorns the arched ceiling. It all looks simultaneously fancy and shabby and stopped in time. Like the lobby of a four-star hotel that had been suddenly abandoned decades ago.

To the left, a long hallway runs past tall windows and a single open doorway, on its way to a set of wide double doors that are currently closed. It then takes a sharp right, disappearing around a corner. On the right is another hallway, offering a straight shot to a sun-drenched room.

My attention, though, is mostly focused on what’s in front of me. A red-carpeted staircase directly across from the front door that rises a dozen steps before splitting in two like a pair of wings. Each symmetrical half then curves upward to the second floor. A stained-glass window looms over the center landing, through which slant streaks of sunlight in rainbowed hues that color the carpet.

“The Grand Stairs,” Mrs. Baker says. “Built with the house in 1913. Very little about the place has changed since then. Mr. Hope made sure to choose a design that was timeless.”

She keeps moving, her heels clicking like a metronome on the marble tile. I trail after her, tripped up slightly by the floor. It’s uneven in spots, swelling and ebbing like the ocean outside.

“You can collect your belongings later,” Mrs. Baker says. “I thought it would be nice to chat in the sunroom first. It’s a cheerful little room.”

I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, nothing about Hope’s End suggests cheerfulness, even the few pretty bits. Gloom and doom seem to have taken up residence in the corners, gathered there like cobwebs. There’s also a chill to the air—a salt-tinged, intangible something that makes me shiver.

I know it’s just my imagination. Three people died here. Horrifically, if legend is to be believed. Knowledge like that can mess with your brain.

As if to illustrate that point, we pass a framed oil painting that depicts a teenage girl in a pink satin gown.

“Miss Hope,” Mrs. Baker says, not bothering to glance at the portrait as she trots by. “Commissioned by her father to mark her birthday.”

Unlike Mrs. Baker, I’m stopped cold by the portrait. In it, Lenora is seated on a white divan, with pink-striped wallpaper behind her and, just over her shoulder, a sliver of mirror in a gilt frame. Lenora leans somewhat awkwardly against the armrest of the divan. Her hands rest on her lap, fingers intertwined, suggesting a tension the painter tried hard to disguise with a too-casual pose.

Her pale skin and delicate features make me think of a flower just before it blooms. Young Lenora had a pert nose, ripe lips, and green eyes almost as bright as the stained glass over the Grand Stairs. She stares directly at the painter, a spark of mischief in her gaze, almost as if she knows what people will be saying about her decades in the future.

Mrs. Baker, five paces ahead of me, turns to give me an impatient look. “The sunroom is this way, Miss McDeere.”

I move on, although not before taking one last look at Lenora’s portrait. Three others, identical in shape and size, hang in a row next to it, all hidden behind black silk crepe. Rather than draped over the paintings, the fabric is stretched taut and held in place by nails driven directly into the frames. All that effort, though, doesn’t entirely hide the portraits. I can faintly see them behind the sheer crepe, hazy and featureless. Like ghosts.

Winston, Evangeline, and Virginia Hope.

And Lenora’s the only one still on display because she’s the only one left.

I catch up to Mrs. Baker, following her quickly down the rest of the hall, passing rooms with their doors firmly shut, suggesting places that are forbidden. At each one, I feel another brief chill. Drafts, I tell myself. Happens all the time in big, old mansions like this.

The sunroom is at least brighter than the rest of the house, if not exactly cheerful. The furniture is the same kind of musty antiques spotted elsewhere around Hope’s End. So much velvet and embroidery and tassels. A grand piano anchors the far end of the room, its lid lowered and shut tighter than a casket.

The room’s stuffiness is leavened by the rows of floor-to-ceiling windows along two walls. One row of windows faces the lawn, through which I can see Carter in the distance, back to raking leaves. The other set of windows looks out onto an empty terrace. A short marble railing, not even waist high, runs the length of the terrace. I can’t see anything past the railing because there’s literally nothing else to see. Just an endless expanse of cerulean sky that makes it seem like the mansion is literally floating in midair.

Mrs. Baker grants me a few more seconds of gawking before gesturing to a red velvet love seat. “Please, sit.”

I lower myself onto the edge of the love seat, as if I’m afraid of breaking it. Which I am. Everything at Hope’s End seems so old and so expensive that I assume nothing here can be replaced. Mrs. Baker shows no such hesitation as she drops onto the love seat across from me. The motion produces a small plume of dust that rises from the fabric in a miniature mushroom cloud.

“Now, Miss McDeere,” she says, “tell me a little about yourself.”

Before I can speak, someone else bursts into the room with a clomp and a rattle. A young woman carrying a metal pail in one hand and using the other to drag a vacuum cleaner behind her. She freezes when she sees us, giving me a few seconds to take in the sheer spectacle of her appearance. About twenty, if that, she wears a formal maid’s uniform that wouldn’t have been out of place in a black-and-white movie. Black, knee-length dress. Starched white collar with pinpoint tips. White apron bearing a smeared print where she presumably wiped her hands.

The rest of her, though, is pure Technicolor. Her hair, dyed a garish shade of red, also contains two streaks of neon blue that trail down both sides of her face, dangling like octopus tentacles. A similar shade of blue streaks across her eyelids before fading at her temples. Her lipstick is bubblegum pink. Rouge colored a darker shade of pink cuts over her cheekbones.

“Oops, sorry!” she says, doing a double take when she sees me, clearly surprised by the presence of a stranger at Hope’s End. I suspect it doesn’t happen often. “I thought the room was empty.”

She turns to leave, producing another rattle that I realize is coming from the half-dozen plastic bracelets in rainbow hues that ride up each of her wrists.

“It’s my fault, Jessica,” Mrs. Baker says. “I should have informed you I’d be needing the room this afternoon. This is Miss McDeere, Miss Hope’s new caregiver.”

“Hi,” I say with a little wave.

The girl waves back, her bracelets clattering. “Hey. Welcome aboard.”

“The two of us were about to get better acquainted,” Mrs. Baker says. “Perhaps you can continue cleaning in the foyer. It’s looking a little neglected.”

“But I cleaned there yesterday.”

“Are you suggesting my eyes have deceived me?” Mrs. Baker says, displaying a smile so clenched it borders on the vicious.

The girl shakes her head, setting her hoop earrings in motion. “No, Mrs. Baker.”

The young maid curtsies, an act of sarcasm Mrs. Baker seems to mistake for sincerity. Then she leaves, giving me another curious glance before hauling her pail, vacuum, and rattling jewelry out of the sunroom.

“Please forgive Jessica,” Mrs. Baker says. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.”

“Oh” is all I can say in return. Aren’t I also considered the help? Isn’t Mrs. Baker?

She puts on her glasses, adjusting them atop the bridge of her nose before peering at me through the thick lenses. “Now, Miss McDeere—”

“You can call me Kit.”

“Kit,” Mrs. Baker says, flinging my name off her tongue like it’s a bad taste. “I assume that’s short for something.”

“Yes. Kittredge.”

“A bit fancy for a first name.”

I understand her meaning. Fancy for someone like me.

“It was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name.”

Mrs. Baker makes a noise. Not quite a hmmm, but close. “And your people? Where are they from?”

“Here,” I say.

“You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

Again, I understand. There’s more than one here. There are the mansions clinging to the Cliffs, home to the moneyed ranks the Hope family used to tower over. Then there’s everyone else.

“Town,” I say.

Mrs. Baker nods. “I thought so.”

“My father is a handyman, and my mother was a librarian,” I volunteer, trying to impress upon Mrs. Baker that my family is just as worthy of respect as the Hopes and their ilk.

“Interesting,” Mrs. Baker says, in a way that makes it clear she finds it anything but. “Do you have much experience as a caregiver?”

“Yes.” I tense, unsure how much she already knows. “What did Mr. Gurlain tell you?”

“Very little. I wish I could say you came highly recommended, but that would be a lie. I was told next to nothing about you.”

I take a deep breath. This could be a good thing. Then again, maybe not. Because it means I’ll have to explain everything myself if asked.

Please don’t ask, I think.

“I’ve been with Gurlain Home Health Aides for twelve years,” I say.

“That’s quite a long time.” Mrs. Baker holds my gaze, her face unreadable. “I assume you learned a lot in those twelve years.”

“I did, yes.”

I start listing all the things I know how to do, ranging from the pedestrian—light cooking, light cleaning, changing sheets with a person still in the bed—to the professional. Giving sponge baths and inserting catheters, drawing blood and injecting insulin, checking shoulder blades and buttocks for bedsores.

“Why, you’re practically a nurse,” Mrs. Baker interrupts when I’ve droned on too long. “Do you have much experience caring for stroke victims?”

“Some,” I say, thinking of Mrs. Plankers and how I cared for her less than two months before her poor husband ran out of money to pay for the agency’s services. Mrs. Plankers was moved to a state-funded nursing home, and I was assigned to another patient.

“Miss Hope’s condition might require more attention than you’re accustomed to,” Mrs. Baker says. “She’s been plagued by bad health most of her life. A bout of polio in her twenties weakened her legs so much that she’s been unable to walk since. Over the past twenty years, she’s suffered a series of strokes. They left her unable to speak and the right side of her body paralyzed. She can move her head and neck, but it’s sometimes difficult for her to control them. All she has, really, is limited use of her left arm.”

I flex my own left arm, unable to imagine only having control of that single, small part of my body. At least now I know why Lenora never left Hope’s End. She couldn’t.

“Is that why the previous nurse left?”

“Mary?” Mrs. Baker says, seemingly flustered. The first genuine emotion I’ve seen from her. “No, she was quite good at her job. She’d been with us for more than a year. Miss Hope adored her.”

“Then why did she leave so suddenly?”

“I wish I knew. She didn’t tell anyone why she was leaving, where she was going, or even that she was leaving at all. She simply left. In the middle of the night, no less. Poor Miss Hope was left unattended all night, during which time something terrible could have occurred. As you well know, considering what happened to the last person in your care.”

My breath hitches in my chest.

She knows.

Of course she does.

Squirming beneath Mrs. Baker’s withering gaze, all I’m able to say is, “I can explain.”

“Please do.”

I break eye contact, ashamed. I feel exposed. So completely naked that I start to smooth my skirt over my legs, trying to cover as much of myself as the fabric will allow.

“I had a—” My voice breaks, even though I’ve told this story a dozen times to just as many skeptical people. Cops. State workers. Mr. Gurlain. “I had a patient. She was sick. Stomach cancer. By the time she found out, it was far too late. It had spread . . . everywhere. Surgery wasn’t possible. Chemo only went so far. There was nothing to do but keep her comfortable and wait until the end arrived. But the pain, well, it was excruciating.”

I continue staring at my lap, at my hands, at the way they keep smoothing over my skirt. My words, though, aren’t as cautious. They get faster, freer—something that never happened in that gray box of an interrogation room at the police station. I chalk it up to being inside Hope’s End. This place is familiar with death.

“Her doctor gave her a prescription for fentanyl,” I say. “To be taken only sporadically and only when necessary. One night, it was necessary. I’d never seen someone hurt so much. That kind of pain? It’s not fleeting. It lingers. It consumes. And when I looked into her eyes, I saw sheer agony. So I gave her a single dose of fentanyl and monitored the pain. It seemed to help, so I went to bed.”

I pause, just like every time I reach this point in the story. I always need a moment before diving into the details of my failure.

“I woke up earlier than normal the next morning,” I say, remembering the dark gray sky outside my window, still streaked with remnants of night. The gloom had felt like a bad omen. One look at it and I knew something was wrong. “I went to check on the patient and found her to be nonresponsive. Immediately, I called 911, which is standard protocol.”

I leave out the part about already knowing it was a waste of time. I recognize death when I see it.

“I was waiting for the EMTs when I saw the bottle of fentanyl. It was company policy to keep all medications in a locked box beneath our beds. That way only the caregiver has access to them. Maybe I had been tired. Or shaken by how much pain she was in. Whatever the reason, I’d forgotten to take the bottle with me.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to picture the bottle lying on its side against the bedside lamp. I do anyway. I see it all. The bottle. The cap sitting a few inches away. The lone pill that remained. A small circle colored a light shade of blue that I always thought was too pretty for something so dangerous.

“During the night, she had swallowed all but one of them,” I say. “She died while I was sleeping. She was pronounced dead at the scene and taken away. The coroner later said she died of cardiac arrest brought on by an overdose of fentanyl.”

“Do you think it was intentional?” Mrs. Baker says.

I open my eyes and see that her expression has softened a bit. Not enough to be mistaken for sympathy. That’s not Mrs. Baker’s style. Instead, what I see in the old woman’s eyes is something more complex: understanding.

“Yes. I think she knew exactly what she was doing.”

“Yet people blamed you.”

“They did,” I say. “Leaving the bottle within reach was negligent. I won’t disagree about that. I never have. But everyone thought the worst. I was suspended without pay. There was an official investigation. The police were involved. There was enough fuss that it made the local paper.”

I pause and picture my father with the newspaper, his eyes big and watery.

What they’re saying’s not true, Kit-Kat.

“I was never charged with any crime,” I continue. “It was ruled an accident, my suspension eventually ended, and now I’m back on the job. But I know most people think the worst. They suspect I left those pills out on purpose. Or that I even helped her take them.”

“Did you?”

I stare at Mrs. Baker, both startled and offended. “What kind of question is that?”

“An honest one,” she says. “Which deserves an honest answer, don’t you think?”

Mrs. Baker sits calmly, the epitome of patience. Her posture, I notice, is perfect. Her plank-straight spine doesn’t come close to touching the back of the dusty love seat. I’m the opposite—slumped in mine, arms crossed, pinned under the weight of her question.

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Baker says.

“Most people don’t.”

“Those of us at Hope’s End aren’t like most people.” Mrs. Baker turns toward the row of windows and the terrace railing just beyond them. Beyond that is . . . nothing. A chasm made up of sky above and, presumably, water below. “Here, we give young women accused of terrible deeds the benefit of the doubt.”

I sit up, surprised. From Mrs. Baker’s no-nonsense demeanor, I’d assumed it was forbidden to talk about the tragic past of Hope’s End.

“Let’s not pretend you don’t know what happened here, dear,” she says. “You do. Just like you know that everyone thinks Miss Hope is the person responsible.”

“Is she?”

This time, I surprise even myself. Normally, I’m not so bold. Once again, I suspect the house is to blame. It invites bold questions.

Mrs. Baker smirks, maybe pleased, maybe not. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

I look around the room, taking in the fussy furniture, the rows of windows, the lawn and the terrace and the endless sky. “Since I’m here, I’ll need to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

It’s apparently the right answer. Or, at the very least, an acceptable one. For Mrs. Baker stands and says, “I’ll show you the rest of the house now. After that, I’ll introduce you to Miss Hope.”

That makes it official. I’m Lenora Hope’s new caregiver.

It doesn’t matter that I lied to Mrs. Baker.

Not just about my previous patient.

But about Lenora Hope, my opinion of whom hasn’t changed. I still think she’s a killer. I also know it doesn’t matter what I think. She’s my patient. My job is to take care of her. If I don’t do my job, I won’t get paid. It’s that simple.

We leave the sunroom and head back down the hallway, toward the heart of the house. When we reach the portraits, I sneak another glance at the only one on display.

Lenora’s oil-painted eyes seem to follow us as we pass.