It occurs to me that much of what she’s typed so far could be, if not a lie, then at least a bending of the truth. Shaping the story in a way that suits her best. I did it myself when talking to Mrs. Baker upon my arrival. I could have said it was my mother who overdosed on pills. Instead, I told her it was merely a patient. Not a lie, exactly, but also not the full truth. Not by a long shot. I suspect Lenora’s been doing the same.
And I’m getting tired of it.
“I know someone was in here last night,” I say. “Now tell me who it was or no more typing. And certainly no more telling your story.”
Lenora studies me, trying to decide if I’m bluffing. Good luck with that. I don’t even know how serious I am. While I suspect I’m as eager to hear the full story as she is to write it, I’m also hesitant. Again, it might not be the whole truth. And if it is, I might not want to know it.
Apparently, I look more decisive than I feel, because Lenora starts typing again.
someones been here I enjoy a moment of vindication. I knew it wasn’t my imagination!
“But not just last night, right? The night before as well.”
many nights Jolted with alarm, I say, “Then who is it? Who’s been in your room?”
Still hesitant, Lenora sizes me up again. Then she resumes typing with pronounced reluctance. It takes her a full minute to press eight keys. When she’s done, I rip the page from the typewriter. Marking the white paper in ink as black as night is a single name.
virginia
SEVENTEEN
Muzak squawks from the kitchen telephone as I wait for Mr. Gurlain to pick up. It’s been five minutes since he put me on hold. Long enough for a queasy rendition of a Captain & Tennille song to be replaced by an even worse cover of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.” I wait, receiver at my ear, as I look around the empty kitchen, hoping no one enters while I’m here. I don’t want to explain why I’ve left Lenora alone in her wheelchair while I make a phone call. I especially don’t want to talk about the reason for the call. Telling it to Mr. Gurlain is going to be hard enough.
When he gets on the line, blessedly cutting off the Muzak, he sounds nervous. I assume he’s thinking about the morning I found my mother dead, which was the last time he got an urgent phone call from me.
“Is something wrong?” he says.
“No. Well, yes.” I inhale, hold the breath in my chest, exhale. “I’m calling to ask for a new assignment.”
“I just gave you a new assignment,” Mr. Gurlain says.
“I’d like a different one,” I say, tacking on a polite “please.”
“It’s only been a few days, Kit.”
“I know. I just—”
My voice seizes up. I have no idea what to say. That I’m afraid? I’m not. Fear involves certainty. You know what you’re afraid of. I’m the opposite. Uncertain and unnerved. And who can blame me? I’m in a slanted mansion where three people were murdered. There are bloodstains on the Grand Stairs and a ballroom where a dead girl swung from the chandelier. A dead girl who, apparently, roams my patient’s bedroom at night.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
I absolutely do not think that what I heard was the spirit of Virginia Hope.
But something’s not right at Hope’s End. Obviously. And it might have frightened Mary enough to make her leave in the middle of the night without taking anything with her. I don’t want to stick around and wait to see if I’ll eventually get that desperate. I’d rather leave now, in broad daylight, taking all my belongings with me.
“I don’t like it here,” I finally say. “I told you I wasn’t comfortable working in this house.”
“And I told you there wasn’t a choice,” Mr. Gurlain says.
“But there are other caregivers available. I saw their names on the assignment board. Can’t you send one of them here and put me somewhere else? It doesn’t have to be immediately. I can wait a week or two until another assignment becomes available.”
That last bit is a stretch. I might not have enough money to last me a few weeks. But Mr. Gurlain doesn’t need to know that. He just needs to put me somewhere else—something he doesn’t seem too inclined to do.
“We went over this, Kit,” Mr. Gurlain says with a sigh. “I make—”
“The assignments and the caregivers follow them. Yes, I know. I was just hoping you would consider making a onetime exception.”
“I can’t,” Mr. Gurlain says without giving it a moment of thought. “Again, you’re welcome to leave your assignment. But if you do, it means you’re leaving my employ for good. I’ve already given you a onetime exception. Most other agencies would have fired you six months ago. Take it or leave it.”
I have no choice but to take it. Yes, I could quit on the spot or, like Mary, leave in the middle of the night, but the only person I’d be hurting is myself. I have next to no money and no job prospects. I’m not even sure I have a house to return to. Quitting would make those problems worse.
In short, I’m stuck at Hope’s End.
“I understand,” I say, talking quickly so Mr. Gurlain can’t tell I’m on the verge of tears. “Sorry to have bothered you.”
Resigned to my fate, I hang up and look around the massive, empty kitchen inside this massive, empty house.
How the hell did I get here?
I think about all the ways my life could have been different—and when everything went wrong. Was it when my mother got sick? Or was it before that? When I got fired from the typing pool and decided to become a caregiver, for instance? Or when, bored by school, I realized I’d never amount to very much and decided not to try? Maybe I was set on this path the first time I heard the chant about Lenora.
At seventeen, Lenora Hope . . .
There’s one blueberry muffin left over from breakfast, sitting in a basket on the counter. I grab it, taking a bite as I move through the dining room and out onto the terrace. Outside is brisk but bright—the perfect weather for clearing my mind. A necessity after my call with Mr. Gurlain. The sun, wind, and salty air combine to calm me down, make me start thinking rationally again.
Now that it’s clear I’m stuck here, I need to focus on how to get myself unstuck.
The answer is obvious: do my job.
Collect a paycheck, save enough to get as far away from here as possible, start over.
It also means I need to follow through on my threat to Lenora if she didn’t tell me who was in her room.
No more typing.
No more story.
I tell myself it’s probably all lies anyway. If Lenora can’t be honest with me about who’s been creeping around her room, then she’s certainly not going to tell me the truth about the night her family was murdered. It all leaves me feeling duped, not to mention stupid, for ever trusting her to be honest.
I decide the next thing to do is figure out what’s been causing the noises in Lenora’s room. There has to be a logical explanation for them. Same with the shadow that slid past the door and the blur I saw at the window.
Since Archie, Mrs. Baker, and even Lenora suggested the wind, that makes it the likeliest culprit. They know Hope’s End better than I do. Similarly, the blur at the window could have been a trick of the moonlight on the glass. As for the shadow at the door, it might have been caused by clouds scudding in front of the moon, momentarily blocking its light. A plane or large bird could have done the same thing. Considering the sad state of the house, it’s even more likely that a loose shutter or a broken drainpipe was the cause.
I turn around and face the back of the mansion, its three formidable stories looming over me. Taking care not to lose my balance, I lean against the railing and scan the exterior. Nothing appears to be out of place around Lenora’s windows. There’s certainly no shutter swinging in the breeze or slanted drainpipe bobbing from the roofline.
But there are plenty of birds. Seagulls whirl overhead before diving to the water, lured by sand crabs left exposed by low tide. I rotate and look down at the strip of sand between the water and base of the cliff. Smooth waves calmly collapse against the shore, pushing foamy water around the rocks jutting from the sand.
I lean forward and look closer, realizing I’m mistaken.
Those aren’t rocks rising out of the wet sand.
They’re something else.
A hand.
A foot.
A head.
Humped beneath the sand is the corpse they’re attached to.
And even before I begin to scream, I know with dreadful certainty that I’m looking at the body of Mary Milton.
EIGHTEEN
I’m in the sunroom, although there’s no sun to be found. Outside, the sky is streaked with dark clouds that rolled in not long after I found Mary’s body. It makes everything gray and oppressive, as if the gathering storm is pressing against the house, trying to force its way in. Joining me in this gloom is the last person I want to see.
Detective Vick.
He sits in the same dusty love seat Mrs. Baker occupied the day I arrived, looking rumpled and not pleased to be here. Or with me. The feeling is mutual. I tense up in his presence. An ingrained reaction. The result is a clash of emotions—disbelief, sorrow, and bone-deep unease that Detective Vick has come not to ask about Mary but to finally arrest me.