The Only One Left by Riley Sager

FORTY-THREE

Shock and despair.

That’s all I feel.

Not anger. Not grief. Just those two extremes of shock and despair, feeding off each other, turning into an emotion I can’t describe because I’ve never felt it before and I pray that no one else is forced to experience it. It feels like every part of me—brain, heart, lungs—has been ripped from my body, leaving me hollow.

That I remain standing is a miracle.

I can’t think.

I can’t speak.

I can’t move.

My father, still blessed with all those qualities, steps toward me, arms outstretched, as if he wants to embrace me but knows I’ll shatter if he does.

“I’m sorry, Kit-Kat,” he says. “I know you wanted more time with her. I did, too. But she was suffering so much. All that pain. I understood why you left those pills out for her. Because you couldn’t take any more of her suffering. None of us could. So I decided to end it.”

I don’t want to listen. Yet despite all the functions currently failing me, hearing is the only one left. I have no choice but to take in every word he says.

“I didn’t force the pills on your mother. She took them willingly. We both knew it was better that way. What I didn’t intend—what neither of us intended—was for you to be blamed for it. When that happened, I didn’t know what to do. But believe me when I say I wasn’t going to let Richard Vick arrest you, Kit-Kat. I vowed to turn myself in if it came to that. But it never did. So I stayed quiet, because I knew you’d hate me if you ever found out.”

I do hate him.

Finally, a third emotion, one that eclipses my shock and despair. Those fade to background noise as the hatred takes over. But it’s a wounded sort of hate. Raw and burning. Like I’m the one who’s just been stabbed.

I can’t tell what hurts more—that he and my mother decided to end her life without telling me, thereby denying me a chance to say goodbye, or the fact that he stayed silent when the police came for me, when I was investigated by the state, when I was suspended from my job.

“That’s why I couldn’t talk to you afterward,” my father says. “It was too hard to look you in the eyes, knowing what I did, knowing I was the cause of your suffering.”

Somehow, I find my voice. “Yet you refused to stop it. You just let everyone think I killed my mother. Worse, you let me think that.”

“I shouldn’t have,” my father says. “I was wrong.”

He takes another step toward me, wincing as he touches his side. At any other moment, my caregiving instincts would kick in. I’d check the wound, try to clean it, find something to stop the bleeding. But I remain stock-still. His wound is nothing compared to mine.

I might have remained like that forever if not for a sound coming from the hallway.

A sharp clack as Lenora Hope finishes loading her shotgun before stepping into the bedroom. Upon hearing it, my father raises his hands and turns to face her.

“Hello, Lenora,” he says.

Lenora levels the shotgun barrel at his chest. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“I’m Patrick.”

Unlike me, Lenora easily matches my father’s name with the boy her sister had loved all those years ago. It even dawns on her, decades too late, that he and not Virginia is responsible for at least some of the violence that claimed the lives of her parents.

“It was you,” she says.

My father responds with a curt nod. “Mostly, yes.”

“Give me one reason not to shoot you dead right now.”

“Because my daughter shouldn’t be here to see it,” my father says as he jerks his head in my direction.

Lenora looks to me, astonished. “Did you know?”

I shake my head. As Lenora watches me do it, the barrel of the shotgun drifts away from my father to the floor. Sensing an opportunity, my father lunges forward and shoves Lenora into the hallway.

“No!” I scream, not knowing which of them I’m actually screaming at. I do it again, even though they ignore me, too intent on destroying each other. I can only run into the hallway while continuing to scream as it all unfolds like a slow-motion car crash in front of me.

My father rushing Lenora.

Smashing into her.

The barrel of the shotgun moving, tilting, firing.

There’s a blast of heat and noise as the gun goes off. A chunk of the wall behind my father explodes, spraying plaster, wood, and wallpaper. He and Lenora continue to collide, edging closer to the top of the Grand Stairs.

My father stops.

Lenora doesn’t.

She falls onto her back, the shotgun leaving her hands as she shudders down the steps and does a single flip onto the landing. I push past my father and start down the Grand Stairs, stopping after only a few steps because I notice something strange.

The entire staircase is trembling.

As is the entire house.

I look around, suddenly terrified. The light fixture in the foyer sways back and forth. From above come several thuds as furniture on the third floor topples over. From below, the earth lets out a low groan, like a beast about to wake. Hearing it, I know in my gut it’ll only be a matter of time—minutes, maybe even seconds—before it does.

When that happens, all of Hope’s End will come tumbling down.

“Get out of the house!” I call to Lenora. “I’m going to get Virginia.”

I start back up the stairs. They’re shaking so hard I can no longer stand and must crawl up them. I continue crawling when I reach the second floor, scrambling past my father.

“What are you doing?” he says, shouting to be heard over the steadily building groan of the earth and the thumping, shaking clatter it creates.

“Saving Virginia!”

“There’s not enough time!”

My father grabs me by the shoulders. I writhe in his grasp. “There is if you help me!”

We lock eyes, a lifetime of guilt and regret passing between us, unspoken yet keenly felt.

“Please,” I say. “You owe me. You owe her.”

My father blinks, as if snapping from a trance.

Then he releases me and, without another word, rushes to Virginia’s room.

I follow him inside, where the room rattles like a broken carnival ride. The tilt, often felt but rarely seen, is now a memory. In its place is a full-on slant that turns the room into an obstacle course. All around us, furniture has started to slide toward the windows, including the bed Virginia still lies upon.

My father grabs her shoulders. I take her legs. Together, we lift and carry her out of the room as the entire house pitches.

Behind me, I hear the empty bed skid across the floor and thunk into the wall.

In the hallway, vases on pedestals crash to the floor and paintings on the walls sway.

Outside there’s a cacophony of bricks raining onto the roof and terrace as, one by one, the chimneys of Hope’s End collapse.

My father and I hurry down the Grand Stairs, trying not to drop Virginia as the steps themselves buck and sway. On the landing, my father hoists her onto his shoulder, freeing my hands to help Lenora.

She refuses to move.

“We need to go!” I shout. “Now!”

Lenora shakes her head. “I’m not leaving.”

Her reply is so nonsensical that at first I think it’s a joke, even though there’s nothing remotely funny about the fact that Hope’s End is collapsing all around us. But when Lenora makes no effort to join me at the doorway, I realize she’s dead serious.

“I can’t leave this place,” she says. “I won’t.”

“Lenora, listen to me,” I say, gripping her shoulders and trying to shake some sense into her. “You’ll die if you stay here.”

A waste of time, words, and breath. She already knows this.

“I had my time away from this place. Now it’s Virginia’s turn.” Lenora touches my hand and gives me a sad smile. “She’s waited long enough. Take good care of her, Kit.”

With a light shove, Lenora Hope sends me away before I can respond. There’s no time for it. I only have enough time to run down the Grand Stairs, skip over the fissures zigzagging across the foyer floor, and join my father and Virginia outside.

He carries her until we reach a place where the ground no longer shakes under our feet. There, my father lowers Virginia onto the grass. I join her, checking for signs of injury. Shockingly, other than the wound on my father’s side, all three of us have made it out unscathed.

I reach for his shirt and say, “How bad are you hurt?”

My father pushes my hand away, gently, slowly, as if savoring the touch.

“You’re a good girl, Kit-Kat,” he says before kissing me on the cheek. “You always have been. I should have told you that more. I regret that now. I regret a lot of things. But you? You’ve always been my pride and joy.”

Then my father turns back to the house and enters without hesitation.

I lurch forward, ready to run in after him, but Virginia grasps my wrist, clinging to it, reminding me she’s still in my care. All I can do is scream for my father to come back as, through the still-open doors, I watch him join Lenora on the Grand Stairs. They don’t look at each other, nor do they reach out for comfort.

They merely sit.

As chunks of ceiling fall around them.

As the stained-glass window over the landing shatters from the strain.

As the entire house shudders through its final death rattle.

The last I see of them is my father and Lenora finally clasping hands as the front doors swing shut.

Then, amid a chorus of groans, creaks, and ear-splitting pops, Hope’s End follows the collapsing cliff and slides into the ocean.