“Then why did Mary really leave?”
“I don’t know.” Jessie turns off the lights and leaves the ballroom. I follow, closing the doors behind me. “One day, she was just . . . gone.”
“Weren’t the two of you close?”
“I thought we were,” Jessie says. “Close enough for her to tell me she was leaving, at least.”
“And no one else knows why she left?”
“Nope.”
We’re in the kitchen now, Jessie heading to the service stairs and me leaning against the center counter. “Aren’t you worried about her?”
“A little,” Jessie says. “But Mary’s smart. And normally super responsible. I know she wouldn’t leave like that without a good reason.”
“Do you think Lenora had something to do with it?”
“Like Mary was scared of her?” Jessie shakes her head. “No way. She adored Lenora. I think she left because of a family emergency or something. Her parents live in the next county. One of them probably got sick and she had to leave, like, immediately. I’m sure she’ll reach out and tell me what happened when she gets the chance.”
I hope that’s true, for Jessie’s sake. But I know from personal experience it doesn’t work that way. When I left a patient to care for my mother, a replacement for me needed to be arranged. I didn’t just leave in the middle of the night like Mary did.
“I should get back to my room,” Jessie says with a tiny yawn. “I’m about to start recording a new book for Lenora. Lace by Shirley Conran.”
“I read it,” I say. “It’s good. Racy.”
“Awesome. Lenora loves racy.”
I wish her goodnight and stand for a moment in the vast, empty kitchen. I run my gaze along the walls, trying to estimate its size, which might be larger than my father’s entire house. This fact would have impressed the hell out of my mother. Not so much my father, who hates the rich almost as much as he hates politicians.
I touch the telephone, which is so old it could be in a museum. But it still works. Lifting the receiver from its cradle, I hear the steady buzz of a dial tone. Quickly, I dial my father’s number, rationalizing it by telling myself he’ll at least want to know where I am. According to the kitchen’s equally ancient clock, it’s just past ten o’clock, so I assume he’s still awake. Sure enough, he answers after three rings.
“Hello?”
I say nothing, the urge to speak fleeing at the sound of his voice. In the background, I hear a woman talking. It might be the TV. Or it could be his new girlfriend, allowed to stay the night now that I’m not there.
“Hello?” he says again. “Who is this?”
I hang up and back away from the phone, worried he’s certain it was me and will now try calling back. An impossibility. He doesn’t know where I am or the phone number for Hope’s End. And since he didn’t want to talk to me while I lived with him, I see no reason why he would now that I’m gone.
The only thing I’m certain about as I head upstairs is that at least now my father knows how it feels to be met with silence.
TEN
Just like when Mrs. Baker first led me to it, my bedroom door seemingly moves on its own. One touch of the handle is all it takes to send it swinging open with a pronounced creak.
Inside, the room glows red. An uneven, pulsing light coats the walls and makes the bedroom look nightmarish. With each flash of red comes an insistent buzzing sound.
Lenora’s call button.
She needs me.
I push into the room, my eyes stinging from the pulsing red light on the nightstand. I trip over the box of books sitting in the middle of the floor, sending it toppling. Paperbacks spill around my ankles as I keep moving.
To the adjoining door.
Into Lenora’s room.
To her bed, where she lies with her left hand clenched around the call button. Her eyes are open wide and wild.
“What’s wrong?” I say, too worried to think about the fact that she can’t answer me. Anything could be wrong. Another stroke. A heart attack. Seizure or sickness or impending death.
When she sees me, Lenora’s grip on the call button loosens. She sighs, looking childlike and embarrassed, and I think I understand what happened.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
Lenora, still holding the call button, uses it to tap twice against the bedspread.
“Must have been a real humdinger,” I say, which is what my mother called especially nasty nightmares. The kind that linger after you wake. The kind that make you afraid to close your eyes again. “Do you want me to stay here until you fall back asleep?”
Two more taps.
When I was little and had a real humdinger of a nightmare, my mother would crawl into my bed and wrap her arms around me, which is what I do now with Lenora. She looks so rattled—still so utterly scared—that it feels wrong not to.
“Nightmares are just your brain thinking it’s Halloween,” I tell her. Something else my mother said. “All trick, no treat.”
Lenora’s left hand finds my right one and clasps my fingers. The gesture, despite being tender, almost desperate, leaves me reeling. Lenora Hope, my town’s version of the bogeyman and the woman whose guilt kids to this very day chant about, is holding my hand.
Part of me wants to recoil from her touch. Another part of me feels terrible about that. No matter what she did in the past—which, let’s be clear, was very, very bad—Lenora’s still a human being who deserves to be treated like one.
If she even did all the things she’s accused of. The same thought I had in the ballroom occurs to me now: Would a seventeen-year-old girl even be capable of killing three people like that? These were physical crimes. Slitting her father’s throat. Stabbing her mother. Tying a noose around her sister’s neck and hoisting her to her death. I wouldn’t be able to do it, which makes it hard for me to believe someone half my age could.
Maybe Jessie’s theory is right and it was Winston Hope or someone else. If so, Lenora has paid a terrible price. No, she never went to jail. But she’s been imprisoned for decades.
In her own home.
In her childhood bedroom.
In a body that refuses to function.
Then again, if what everyone has said is true, then it means I’m embracing a murderer. One whose care and well-being I’m responsible for. I’m not sure which scenario is worse. I’m also not sure I can continue to work here without knowing the truth. Maybe that’s what made Mary leave without warning. She could no longer take the not-knowing.
“Lenora,” I whisper. “Did you really do it?”
She releases my hand, and I hold my breath, preparing for the answer about to be tapped against the bedspread. To my surprise, Lenora doesn’t tap. Instead, I get a nod toward the typewriter on the other side of the room.
“You want to type?”
Lenora taps twice against my hand.
“Right now?”
Two more taps. More urgent this time.
Because it seems easier to bring the typewriter to Lenora instead of the other way around, I carry it across the room in an awkward waddle and plop it down on the edge of the mattress. Then I climb back into bed and prop up Lenora against me so she can easily access the keyboard. All that effort leaves me perspiring. This better be worth it.
“Go ahead,” I say as I place her left hand on the keys.
Lenora knits her brows, thinking. Then she types four words before nodding, signaling for me to hit the return bar.
i wont hurt you
My pulse quickens as I read the sentence.
“I appreciate that,” I say, not sure how else to reply. How did Lenora know I wanted to hear this? Are my emotions as easily read as hers?
Lenora resumes typing.
i suppose youve heard the song about me
“The rhyme?” I say, surprised she knows of its existence. It must be horrible having her life—and her family’s deaths—reduced to a childish chant. “I have. It’s . . . cruel.”
i find it amusing
Another surprise. “You do?”
all that effort for little old me
“Is it true?”
you can find out
Curiosity tugs at me. As does fear and a healthy dose of uncertainty. “How?”
i want to tell you everything
“Everything? What does that mean?”
things ive never told anyone else
“About the murders?” I say, surprised I can hear myself over the sound of my heartbeat pounding like a drum in my ears.
yes about that night
I look at Lenora. The dim light of the room somehow makes her green eyes brighter. They glint fiercely now. Emeralds lit from within, holding me hostage in their gaze.
My God, she’s serious.
“Why me? Why now?”
because i trust you
“Are you sure?”
Lenora’s hand slides from the typewriter and drops to the mattress. Her body language is crystal clear. She’s sure.