Lenora brushes my hand, and I press the shift key. Two more presses and two nods later, she finally lays her hand flat against the keys—her signal that another chapter is finished.
I pluck the page from the typewriter and place it facedown atop the sixteen others we’ve typed today. A staggering amount. Yet if Lenora’s tired, she shows no sign of it. She gives me an expectant look, as if waiting for me to insert a fresh page into the carriage.
“We’ve done enough for today,” I say. At least I have. Unlike Lenora, I’m exhausted. Being hunched next to her all day has left me stiff and aching. When I stand up straight, half my joints let out a relieved crackle. “It’s almost dinnertime.”
The rest of the evening proceeds on schedule. Dinner and pills. Dessert. Circulation exercises, then bath, then bed. Lenora spends all of it lost in thought. Presumably composing what she plans to type tomorrow.
I know the feeling well. When that article about me ran in the newspaper, I called the reporter and demanded he hear my side of the story. The reporter listened with disinterest while I told him my mother’s death was suicide, that leaving those pills within her reach was simply an accident, that I would never do anything to hurt her.
“Detective Vick says otherwise,” the reporter said, as if the police’s word was gospel and I was merely a liar trying to cover my tracks.
That was six months ago, and I still sometimes get the pent-up urge to shout my innocence from every rooftop in town. I can only imagine how Lenora feels. It’s been fifty-four years for her. No wonder she doesn’t want to stop typing.
After putting her to bed and placing the call button next to her hand, I say, “Do you want me to stay until you fall asleep?”
Lenora taps twice on the bedspread.
I nod. “Then I’ll stay.”
She closes her eyes and I gather the typed pages and take them to the divan. As Lenora’s breathing deepens with sleep, I begin to read what she typed. Despite seeing snippets all day, I’m surprised by the quality of her writing. I assumed the prose would be choppy and weak—a string of half sentences not unlike the typed responses she’s given me. Instead, Lenora is a natural storyteller. Her writing is clear and unfussy, while retaining a distinctive voice. From the very first line, I’m hooked.
By the time I’m near the end, though, my surprise has curved into shock.
Now I know what happened to the knife used to kill Winston and Evangeline Hope.
Lenora tossed it into the ocean.
That act—plus the fact that her nightgown was covered in blood—makes her look more guilty than ever.
It doesn’t help that she declares herself both good and evil. Now, some of that could be attributed to her home life, which was anything but happy. An addict mother. A philandering father. A sister she seemed to have nothing in common with. No wonder Lenora longed for escape and the attention of someone of the opposite sex. I know that feeling all too well, even now in my thirties. It’s why I started sleeping with Kenny, after all. But Lenora was so young, so inexperienced. When you’re that age, full of raging emotions and, yes, desire, it’s very possible Lenora saw those natural feelings as wicked—or worse.
Yet that doesn’t explain the bloody nightgown.
Or getting rid of the weapon that killed her parents.
Or why she fetched a rope as her sister’s screams rang through the house.
I can’t stop thinking about all of that as I read the last three sentences Lenora typed today.
But here’s the thing--I wasn’t a good girl.
Not in the least.
You’ll see for yourself very soon.
I lower the pages and look to the bed, where Lenora lies fast asleep. As I watch her, a sense of unease creeps over me.
I’d assumed she wanted to tell her story in an attempt to finally clear her name. And that she chose me to help because she saw us as kindred spirits. One falsely accused woman telling her story to another, working together to declare her innocence.
Now I fear it’s the opposite.
Lenora didn’t pick me because she thinks I’m innocent.
She did it because she thinks I’m guilty.
And what we’ve been typing today isn’t an attempt to clear her name.
It’s a confession.
FOURTEEN
I put the pages in the lockbox under my bed, pretending I’m not hiding them, when that’s exactly what I’m doing. Secreting them away beneath Lenora’s rolling, rattling pill bottles because I don’t want anyone else to find them. But it’s not Lenora I’m worried about as I lock the box and slide it back under the bed. My concern is that having Lenora Hope’s partial confession in my possession will somehow make me look equally bad.
Guilt by association.
I’m dropping the lockbox key into the nightstand drawer when I hear a series of noises from above and outside.
A crack, a scrape, a clatter on the terrace.
I rush to the window, struggling to see what it was. It’s dark outside, and the lights inside the bedroom merely reflect my worried, tired face onto the window’s glass.
Thinking whatever I just heard could be related to the noises coming from Lenora’s room last night, I decide to investigate. I whisk out of my room and take the service stairs to the kitchen. From there, I move through the dining room on my way to the terrace. As soon as I step outside, something crunches beneath my feet.
A slate shingle recently fallen from the roof.
That’s at least one mystery noise explained.
A dozen more shingles litter the terrace, many broken into a hundred pieces, a few still miraculously intact. I step over and around them on my way to the terrace railing. A frigid breeze comes off the ocean in steady, brine-scented puffs. I close my eyes and lean into it, enjoying the chill. It feels good after spending so much time inside the stuffy confines of Hope’s End. Lenora doesn’t know what she’s missing.
The terrace runs the length of the entire mansion, ending on both sides with four short steps. The ones on the left descend to a flagstone patio surrounding an empty swimming pool. On the right, the steps lead to a swath of lawn. On the other side of it sits a one-story stone cottage so quaint and tidy it could have been plucked from a storybook. Warm light glows from a window beside the arched door.
Light from another window flicks on above and behind me, in the mansion itself. It casts a slanted rectangle of brightness across the terrace. In that patch of light, a curl of metal glints among the shards of broken tile.
I pick it up and hold it to the light. At first, I think it could be a paper clip bent into an oblong ring. But it’s much thicker than a paper clip. Sturdier, too. It takes some force to bend it further. Both ends are curved toward each other, one more so than the other, making me deduce it was a hook of some kind that either broke or fell off. Maybe it’s what caused the shingles to drop from the roof.
I turn back to the lit window to scan the roof one story above it. Craning my neck, I try to see where it is in relation to my room. Two doors down, it looks like. On the other side of Lenora’s room.
Mrs. Baker.
I take a few backward steps, angling for a better glimpse inside the room. I can make out frilly curtains, a hint of purple floral wallpaper, a shadow stretching across the ceiling.
Something else then catches my eye.
To the right of the lit window, in Lenora’s room.
There, framed in the darkened window, is a gray blur.
I gasp, watching as the blur passes the window and disappears. I can’t make out what it is. The room is dark and the movement too brief. All I know is that I’m certain someone is walking around Lenora’s bedroom.
I keep moving backward, eyes fixed on the window, hoping for another glimpse of whoever it is. I’m so focused on Lenora’s room that I stop paying attention to the slate shingles on the terrace. I trip on one and stumble backward into the railing, which hits the small of my back and throws me off-balance.
The twist of metal flies from my fingers as I reel wildly.
Arms flailing.
Heart jittering.
My shoulders and head lean beyond the railing, out over the waves crashing far below. For a second, the chasm at my back feels like it’s reaching up, as if trying to yank me over the edge and into its depths.
I manage to lunge to the side, flipping over until my stomach is pressed against the railing and I’m staring straight down the cliffside. Fifty feet below is the Atlantic, its waves collapsing onto the shore at the base of the cliff. A narrow strip of rock-studded sand sits between the cliff and the water, glowing white in the moonlight. I’d find it lovely if not for the fact that one wrong move would have sent me crashing into it.
On my right, I hear the swish of footsteps across the dew-dusted lawn. Carter’s voice cuts through the night. “Mary?”
I turn to see him already halfway across the lawn and coming closer. He halts when he realizes it’s me.
“Sorry.” He pauses, befuddled, like he’s literally just seen a ghost. “Are you okay?”