The Only One Left by Riley Sager

FORTY

Upstairs, the woman I’d thought was Lenora Hope is in bed but wide awake, as if she knew I’d be coming.

No surprise there.

I always had the feeling she was more aware than she let on. Virginia likely had known this moment would arrive since my first night here, when she typed those tantalizing words.

i want to tell you everything

She didn’t, yet I learned it all anyway. Right up to the moment she went searching for her father, a knife gripped in her hand.

“I ran to alert my mother, who was in her usual daze,” Lenora told me. “No one had bothered to tell her about Virginia, the urgent labor, my father’s orders to take the baby. She had no idea. But her mind seemed to sharpen as I told her what had happened—and what I worried was about to happen. She patted my cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll handle this.’ It was the last thing she ever said to me.”

Silence fell over the kitchen then. Even though we didn’t acknowledge it, I knew both Lenora and I were recalling our mothers’ final words.

Please, Kit-Kat. Please. I’ll only take one. I promise.

“I don’t think Virginia intended to kill her,” Lenora eventually said. “I think my father was her sole target and that my mother got caught up in it somehow. Collateral damage. And I suspect my sister felt so guilty about it that she then tried to hang herself.”

“That’s why I’ve gone along with everything for so many years,” Archie said. “Here, Virginia is safe. Here, no one knows what she’s done. It’s for her own good. I believe that to my very soul.”

“That’s why I don’t let her go outside,” Lenora added. “And why we always refer to her as Miss Hope. If others found out who she is and what she did—what we continue to do—it could destroy Virginia. Imagine her in some state facility, wasting away. At least here she’s home.”

But Hope’s End isn’t a home. It’s a cage built of secrets. And Virginia’s not the only person trapped in it. Lenora and Archie are, too.

I refuse to join them. That’s why I now stand at the foot of Virginia’s bed. It’s time to say goodbye.

“I know who you are,” I tell her.

She gazes at me, unsurprised. In fact, I detect a hint of satisfaction in her eyes, as if she’s proud of me for sussing everything out.

“I also know you murdered your parents.”

Virginia lifts her left hand, ready to tap a response.

“Don’t,” I say, in no mood for a denial. But I also don’t want confirmation. In a sense, nothing has changed since my first night here. Despite assuming she was guilty, I was also hesitant to find out if I was right. Once the typing started, the opposite ended up happening. I began to assume she was innocent and became hell-bent on being proven correct. It turns out I was only fooling myself into believing what I wanted to be the truth, even though deep down I knew it wasn’t.

It’s likely how my father felt right before he stopped speaking to me. The newspaper in his hand, the disbelief in his eyes, the telling himself the complete opposite of what he assumed deep down in his bones.

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

“I understand why you felt the need to do it,” I tell Virginia. “You had your reasons. And I hope you regret it now. You’ve had plenty of time to think about your actions. And I just wish—”

I stop, unable to articulate exactly how I feel. If there’s a word for feeling betrayed, foolish, and disappointed all at once, I’ve yet to learn it. Because the truth is, I liked Virginia. I still like her, despite everything. That’s what makes this so hard.

It’s likely Mary reacted the same way when she found out, necessitating that typed apology from Virginia.

im sorry im not the person you thought i was

“I wish you’d been able to tell me everything yourself,” I say.

Instead, I got only hints and half-truths. Although she never outright lied to me, she never told me the whole story, either. It would have been so easy, too. A simple sentence, typed with her left hand, telling me that she was Virginia Hope, that everything I thought I knew was a lie, that she was guilty.

If she had done that, I might have been able to stay. The job was to take care of a killer. I knew that from the start. And I think I could have done that for as long as necessary. But now? Now I don’t think I’ll ever trust or believe Virginia again.

Which means my only option is to leave.

“Goodbye, Virginia,” I say. “I hope whoever’s assigned to care for you next never tries to learn the truth.”

Giving her a sad little wave, I move into my own room, forcing myself not to look at Virginia on the way out. I feel her stare anyway, the heat of her green eyes following me as I go. Then, as promised, I leave without packing.

No suitcase of clothes.

No box of books.

No medical bag.

I decide to arrange for Carter to bring them to me later. Or maybe I’ll just leave them here, joining Mary’s belongings. A growing collection of things abandoned by previous caregivers for the next unfortunate one to discover.

The only thing I take is my car keys, which I clutch in my hands as I hurry down the service stairs. The kitchen is empty, thank God. I don’t know where Lenora or Archie went, and I don’t care. I’m in no mood to see them again, either. Before leaving, I go to the phone hanging on the wall and dial quickly, knowing either of them could enter as the phone rings and rings.

When my father finally answers, he sounds groggy and confused. I check the kitchen clock. It’s almost midnight. I woke him up.

“Daddy,” I say.

“Kit-Kat?”

My heart, thudding so heavily for so long, skips a joyous beat. I had no idea how much I needed to hear that.

“Can I come home? Right now?”

“Of course. What’s going on? You sound scared.”

“I can’t stay here any longer,” I say. “I need to get away from this place. And them.”

“Them?”

“Lenora and Virginia. They’ve been lying all this time. And I can’t be a part of it.”

But it’s not just that. There’s something else as well.

I need to confess.

“When I get home, I have things to tell you. About what happened to Mom.”

I hang up to keep myself from saying the rest. That can’t be spoken on the phone. It needs to be said in person, face-to-face, which is what I should have done six months ago.

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

But it is.

All of it.

Memories of that night wash over me as I leave the kitchen, trot down the hallway, whisk my way toward the front door.

My mother, in pain so severe that few words exist to describe it. She wasn’t wracked with pain. She was aflame with it. She was possessed by it.

Me, literally creaking from exhaustion and worry and aching empathy, waiting for the painkiller to kick in, desperate to provide her with some small amount of relief. I stroked her hair. I whispered soothing words into her ears. I prayed to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in to do something to put her out of her misery.

Eventually, the pain broke. It was still there, of course, but just a simmer instead of a full boil. The fentanyl had leashed it enough to allow my mother to rest, which was all I could reasonably hope for at that moment.

As she fell asleep, I reached for the fentanyl bottle, ready to take it back to the lockbox under my bed. I’d barely wrapped my fingers around it when I felt my mother’s hand on mine, stilling it.

“Leave them,” she whispered.

“You know I’m not allowed to do that.”

“Just for tonight.” Her voice was raspy, labored, slowly but surely filling with renewed pain. “Just in case I need one.”

“Mom, I can’t.”

She tightened her grip atop my hand, shockingly strong for someone so utterly depleted. In hindsight, I don’t think it was her doing it.

It was the pain, taking over and moving her like a marionette.

“Please, Kit-Kat,” my mother whispered. “Please.”

What followed was an internal tug-of-war that felt like hours but in reality lasted mere seconds. Part of me was compelled to follow protocol, do the right thing, care for her in the responsible way I’d been trained to do. But another part of me knew that my mother was suffering—and that I could help alleviate it.

“I’ll only take one,” she said. “I promise.”

One more pill.

That wasn’t so bad.

It was more than recommended, but sometimes rules had to be broken.

This, I concluded, was one of those times.

“Just one,” I said.

Then I placed the pill bottle back on the nightstand. Even though I’m sure it barely made a sound then, in my memory it’s as loud as the front door to Hope’s End slamming shut behind me.

When I went to bed that night, I had a sickening feeling my mother intended to take every pill in that bottle. Call it a sixth sense. Or a premonition. Yet I convinced myself that she knew better, ignoring how extreme suffering could cloud someone’s judgment. I wanted to think she wouldn’t purposefully overdose, so that was what I believed.

As a result, my mother is dead.

All because of my actions.

I hop into my car and drive off, the steering wheel unsteady beneath my shaking hands. I refuse to treat my father the way Virginia treated me. Pretending to be innocent. Forcing him to live with nagging doubt for the rest of his days. Driving a wedge between us until we’ve become exactly like the Hope sisters—stuck with each other in a cycle of suspicion and guilt.

The truth will set me free—even if it might also send me to prison.

I bring the car to a stop at the gate, which blocks the driveway like the bars of a jail cell. I get out of the car and hit the button embedded into the wall. As I walk back to the car, the gate shimmies open.

Then it rattles.

Then it stops.

I pound the roof of the Escort in frustration. Not this. Not now.

As I march back to the gate, determined to push it all the way open, I hear footfalls fast and furious in the grass, followed by Carter’s panting voice.

“Kit? Where are you going?” I spin around, squinting in the glare of the car’s headlights as Carter emerges from the darkness. “I heard you driving away and ran to catch up. Are you leaving?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I was wrong,” I say. “We were wrong.”

I pull on the gate, forgetting Carter’s warning when I first arrived.

This place can bite.

He was at least right about that. Because when I give the gate another tug, I touch the wrong place at the wrong time. The story of my life. My hand’s already wrapped around one of the bars before I feel it—a spot of rusted wrought iron, weathered by salt air into a razor-sharp point.

The metal pierces the skin of my left hand. Swearing, I jerk my hand back and examine the damage. Although small, the cut’s bad enough to leave me bleeding. At least it wasn’t for nothing. The gate is now open enough for my car to ease through it.

“Wrong about what?” Carter says.

“Lenora’s not your grandmother. She’s not even Lenora. She’s Virginia, Lenora’s sister.”

Carter’s face pales as he reels backward like a man who’s just been shot.

“I—I don’t understand.”

I start walking toward the Escort. “Get in and I’ll tell you.”

Carter doesn’t move as I slide behind the wheel and rev the engine. I understand his shock, just as clearly as I understand the need to leave this place before it can cause further damage.

Not just to me, but to Carter as well.

“Come with me,” I tell him. “Just for tonight. Come with me and we’ll—”

I have no idea what we’ll do. Figure something out. I picture Ricardo Mayhew saying the same thing to Archie fifty-four years ago, urging the man he loved to escape Hope’s End.

Archie stayed.

Carter doesn’t.

Without a word, he opens the passenger door and hops in. I hit the gas pedal, and together we pass through the gate, leaving Hope’s End behind.