Detective Vick stands, grabs me by the wrist, and drags me into the hallway, seething.
“Is this some kind of game to you, Kit? Because I didn’t believe a word of what you said about your mother, you’ve decided to toy with me?”
“I’m not toying with you,” I say. “Lenora does know how to type. We spent all of yesterday doing it. She’s been telling me what happened the night her family was murdered. I think she plans on either confessing or telling me who really did it.”
“That’s insane, Kit. The woman can barely sit up. Do you seriously expect me to believe that Lenora Hope is typing her goddamn life story?”
“But it’s the truth!”
“Sure,” Detective Vick says, dripping sarcasm. “Let’s go with that. But why now? After so many years, why has she decided to tell you, of all people, what happened that night?”
“I don’t know. But she has told me things.” The words tumble out in a mad rush, so desperate am I to have Detective Vick believe me about something. “About the months leading up to the murders. About her family. And her sister. She said the ghost of her sister has been in her room.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?”
“No,” I say, because I don’t. Not really. Not yet, anyway. “But I do think something is wrong with this place. It’s . . . not right.”
Detective Vick takes a step back and stares at me, his anger dissolving into something else. It looks like pity.
“We’re done talking, Kit,” he says as he pulls a business card from his pocket and presses it into my hand. “Call me if you ever feel like telling the truth.”
He stalks off down the hall toward the Grand Stairs. I march back into Lenora’s room. Seeing her at the desk, now in full typewriting mode, makes me break one of the cardinal rules of a Gurlain Home Health Aides employee—no swearing at patients.
“What the fuck was that about?”
Lenora, exuding the patience of a saint, nods for me to join her. She then types two words.
im sorry
“You should be. You made me look like a complete liar in front of the detective.”
i had to
“Why?”
it must be a secret
“You knowing how to type needs to be a secret?” I say. “From whom?”
everyone
It would have been nice to know that before I invited Detective Vick up to her room. Now that I do know—and now that I’ve completely blown my chance of him ever believing me about anything—I feel compelled to ask the same questions I think he would have posed.
“Did Mary tell you she was leaving?”
Lenora taps once on the keyboard.
“The last time you saw her, how did she act?”
Lenora starts typing, stops to give it some thought, starts over. The result is a strange beast of a word.
weirnervous
I study the word, which is a pretty accurate summation of my own current state. “Which is it? Weird or nervous?”
both, Lenora types.
“Had she been acting this way for a while?”
Lenora taps the keyboard twice. Yes.
“Did Mary ever mention hearing strange noises at night?”
She gives the keyboard two more taps. Another yes.
I’m hit with a memory of what Jessie told me my first night here.
I think she was scared. Hope’s End isn’t a normal house. There’s a darkness here. I can feel it. Mary did.
Even though Jessie assured me it was a joke, I’m now starting to think it wasn’t. Not entirely.
“Do you know if she ever found out what they were?” I say.
Rather than tap, Lenora types out her answer.
no
“And that’s what made her weird and nervous?”
Lenora bangs out two more words.
and scared
My heart hiccups in my chest. So it is true. Maybe Jessie knew because Mary told her or maybe she just subconsciously suspected something was amiss. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that something at Hope’s End frightened Mary Milton.
“What was she scared of, Lenora?”
I watch Lenora’s hand slide over the keyboard in a way similar to the planchette on Jessie’s Ouija board. Eight keys and one press of the space bar later, I see the answer I’d been expecting all along.
my sister
My sister knew I was in love. Sisters can tell such things. Even ones who never get along, which certainly was the case for the two of us.
“Who is it?” she asked on one of those rare occasions we found ourselves in the same room at the same time. Usually we managed to steer clear of each other. But that night we both chose to occupy ourselves in the library.
“I have no idea who you’re referring to,” I replied as I sat by the fireplace, reading one of my mother’s romance novels that I ordinarily would have found beneath me. I wanted to write serious literature and normally read only that. I started to feel differently once I fell in love with Ricky.
And it was love.
Love at first sight, to use the cliche. In my case, though, it was true. The moment I saw Ricky, I knew I was in love with him. It was impossible not to feel that way. Not only was he the most handsome man I’d ever seen, but he understood me in a way no one else did. I could tell from the way he looked at me. He didn’t see a wealthy man’s spoiled daughter, content with flirting and flouncing about in pretty dresses. He saw a young, intelligent woman with hopes, dreams, ambition.
He saw the person I wanted myself to be.
“You’re so different from the rest of your family,” he told me that first night, after we’d spent an hour talking on the terrace.
“In a good way, I hope,” I said.
“In a wonderful way.”
I let him kiss me then. My first kiss. It was greater than I ever dreamed it could be. When his lips touched mine, it felt as if my entire existence was exploding like a firework. Bright and sparkling and white hot.
I pulled away, short of breath and blushing. For a moment, I thought I was going to faint. I swooned against the terrace railing, dizzy. I likely would have fallen over if Ricky hadn’t caught me in his arms and whispered, “When can I see you again?”
“Tomorrow night,” I whispered back, as if I were Juliet and he my Romeo, meeting at my balcony. “Right here.”
Two weeks had passed since then, and the two of us saw each other every night. We’d meet on the terrace and rush off somewhere we couldn’t be found. When we were together, the world melted away, turning everything to sheer bliss. When we were apart, he was all I thought about, dreamed about, cared about.
We kissed again the second night we met, this time without restraint. We were by the cottage, half hidden in shadow, telling each other our dreams and our disappointments. I told Ricky about wanting to flee to Paris, living like a bohemian, experiencing everything and then writing it down.
Ricky told me how, through tough times and hard luck, he came to work here. “My family is piss-poor,” he said, using a term that both shocked and thrilled me with its crudeness. “My mother died when she had me. My father’s a mean drunk who’d rather beat me than work. I learned right fast that school was useless. Money beats knowledge every single time. Since I’m good with my hands, I came here.”
He sighed and looked up at the sky. “I want more than this, I can tell you that. It’s crushing, not having the life you’re meant to live. It weighs a man down.”
I tried to alleviate that weight the only way I knew how, by letting Ricky wrap his thick arms around my waist, pull me close, and kiss me as passionately as he wanted.
We were still kissing when I heard the whisper of footfalls in the grass. It was Berniece, returning home from her duties in the kitchen. I broke away and fled before we could be caught. But that close call didn’t change anything. I knew that what Ricky and I were doing was wrong, but I didn’t care. I longed for the fireworks his kiss created. I needed them.
We grew more daring with each meeting. Kissing, touching, exploring. On the third night, when Ricky’s hand moved to my breast, I let it remain there. On the fourth night, I slipped my hand into his trousers and grasped his manhood. I’ll spare you the sordid details, but it progressed like that until, exactly one week after the night we met, I allowed Ricky to take my virginity.
When it was over, I laid in his arms and whispered, “I love you.”
Ricky grinned and said, “I love you, too.”
In that moment, I became a woman. I suspect that was the change my sister saw in me that night in the library.
“You’re clearly mad about someone,” she said. “And I know who it is.”
I looked up from my book, numb with worry. Had Berniece seen us? Did she know? Was she now telling others?
“What have you heard?”
“Nothing,” my sister said. “But it’s obvious you’re in love with Archibald.”
I struggled not to laugh as relief poured over me. So many things prevented Archie and me from being together, starting with the fact that he felt more like a sibling to me than my own sister did.
“It’s not Archie,” I said.
“Don’t tell me you still carry a torch for Peter. It’s hopeless. He has no interest in you.”
“Or you.”
“He’ll come around,” my sister said. “I’m certain of it. Then we’ll marry and spend the rest of our days here.”