“Almost,” Carter says before finally reaching for the whiskey bottle he’s been wanting to grab for the past five minutes. He empties what’s left into his mug and holds it out to me, offering a first sip of the coffee-tinged whiskey inside. “I didn’t want to sound crazy.”
“That was my job, apparently.” I take the mug, have a sip, grimace. It tastes awful but gets the job done. “Which is why, for now, I think it’s a good idea to stay quiet. Even if we told him, I doubt he’d believe us. Especially me.”
“So what should we do?”
A very good question. One I’m at a loss to answer. The likeliest way to get Detective Vick to believe us is to present him with proof that we’re right. Then it will be impossible for him to ignore us. Right now, the only thing I can think of is to go straight to the source.
“We ask Lenora,” I tell Carter. “And get her to—”
I’m interrupted by a noise from outside.
A great deafening, tearing sound that shakes the cottage and everything in it, including me and Carter. We clutch the rattling table as it continues for one, two, three seconds. By the time it’s over, Carter’s coffee cup is shattered on the floor and I mentally feel the same way.
“Was that an earthquake?” I say.
Carter lets go of the table. “I . . . think so?”
The two of us rise on unsteady legs and make our way outside to investigate. On the terrace, Mrs. Baker, Jessie, and Archie have done the same. All five of us realize at once what just happened—a section of cliff between the terrace and the cottage broke off, leaving a jagged semicircle that looks as if something has taken a bite out of the lawn.
Carter and I take a few cautious steps toward it, both of us testing the ground, fearful the entire lawn might fall away beneath our feet. Which it very well could. We stop when we can just see over the edge. Far below, chunks of fallen earth sit surrounded by foamy waves.
“Welp,” Carter says. “That’s not good.”
TWENTY-FOUR
For the second day in a row, I skip Lenora’s exercises and take her straight to the typewriter. Even though I know it’s bordering on dereliction of duty, I’m too impatient.
On a normal night—not that any night at Hope’s End can be described as normal—I would have shaken Lenora awake after leaving Carter’s cottage, carried the typewriter to the bed, and demanded the truth about the baby. But the night before was particularly abnormal.
After the partial collapse of the cliff outside the cottage, Carter wisely decided to move into the main house until the damage could be assessed. Not that it’s any safer in here. While helping Carter carry some of his belongings to an empty bedroom on the third floor, I spotted a new crack at the service stairs and a broken tile on the kitchen floor. Bad omens all.
Jessie sidled up to me while I examined the stairwell walls and whispered, “What were you and Carter up to?”
“Just talking,” I said.
She winked. “Sure. Right. Totally.”
“We were.”
“Did you find out anything else about Mary?”
I stopped on the landing and studied her. Dressed in a pink sleepshirt and missing her makeup and jewelry, she looked like a complete stranger. Which she technically was.
“No,” I said before continuing on.
I wanted to trust Jessie. I really did. Of everyone at Hope’s End, she seemed the least likely to have a reason for wanting Mary dead and the most likely to be an ally to me. But since I’d already ruled out Carter as a suspect, I couldn’t risk doing it for anyone else. Even Jessie. While I’m not usually a suspicious person, in this case I needed to be. I doubted Mary was suspicious, either, and look at what happened to her.
Carter must have been thinking the same thing when he came to my door while on his way to his temporary room on the third floor. “Are you going to be okay?” he said in a half whisper.
“Yeah,” I replied, even though I knew what he was really asking. Barring the possible but unlikely scenario that someone from town had snuck through the open gate and killed Mary, someone under this roof was a murderer. “I’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t fine.
I ended up spending most of the night wide awake, thinking about Lenora and Carter and the idea that Mary was dead because she knew too much about them both. That led to wondering if I now knew too much. The answer I came up with—a resounding yes—prompted more questions. How much danger was I in? Should I just up and leave in the middle of night like everyone thought Mary had?
With ideas like that clanging through my skull, the fact I managed to fall asleep at all is a minor miracle. When I woke to sunrise piercing my eyes and the mattress slid lower on the bed frame, I realized that I hadn’t heard any mysterious noises coming from Lenora’s room. Either I slept right through them or whoever—whatever?—is causing them decided to take the night off.
Now I stifle a yawn while getting Lenora into typing position. When she’s ready, I kneel beside her and say, “Lenora, I think we should talk about the baby.”
She pretends not to be surprised I know.
But she is.
Her face, as expressive as a silent film star’s, can’t hide such shock. This is especially true of her eyes, which widen at the same time they go slightly dim. An unspoken answer to the biggest question I had: Could Carter have been wrong about Lenora’s pregnancy? Yes, that photograph of her in 1929 is very persuasive, but it doesn’t confirm anything.
“I know you were pregnant,” I say. “And Mary knew, too, didn’t she?”
Lenora’s left hand rises and falls twice against the typewriter. That’s a yes.
“What happened to the baby?”
Lenora lets out a long, sad sigh. Then she types a single word—gone—before letting her hand slide off the typewriter.
“Gone?”
It’s strange how a word so short can contain so many possibilities. Lenora could have had a miscarriage. Or the baby was stillborn. Or left this world shortly after entering it. Or was bundled up and left on the front steps of a church on Christmas morning. That single word—gone—could also mean something happier. The child was born, grew up, left Hope’s End, and now has a family of their own. Although, going by Lenora’s reaction, I don’t think that’s what happened.
“Did the baby die?” I say.
Lenora makes no indication she wants to type more. Her hands sit in her lap, the useful left one atop the useless right, and she stares at them as if she didn’t hear me.
“Who was the father?” I say, pressing. “Was it Ricky?”
Still nothing from Lenora. No acknowledging the question. No acknowledging me. Without saying a word, she’s made her message clear—she doesn’t want to talk about it.
I can’t blame her. She was pregnant. The baby’s now gone. She probably thinks there’s nothing else to be said.
Only there is.
And Lenora told it to at least one other person—Mary.
Considering what happened to her, I should be grateful Lenora now refuses to tell me. Maybe that’s another reason for her silence. She doesn’t want to put me in more danger than I might already be.
Once again, I think about leaving. It would take only minutes to pack my suitcase and box, grab my medical bag, and walk away from Hope’s End without looking back. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Even though I haven’t been told everything, what I do know is enough to keep me here. I need to learn the rest.
The Hope family murders. Lenora’s pregnancy. Mary’s death. They’re all tied together in a complex knot of secrets, lies, and misdeeds both past and present. I’m certain that if I can unravel it, the truth will be revealed. About Carter and Mary, yes, but most of all about Lenora. She’s the person I need to understand the most.
So I stay, letting the morning pass slowly and silently. With any other patient, I would have busied myself with light housework or cooking lunch or even just watching TV with them. None of those options are available to me at Hope’s End. So I pass the time reading a Danielle Steel novel on the divan while Lenora sits in her wheelchair and stares out the window.
It reminds me of my mother’s final days, when she was too fragile and pain-wracked to be moved to the couch in the living room. Stuck in a room without a television and its comforting background noise, the silence became so thick it was almost unbearable.
Today isn’t quite that bad, but it’s enough to make me appreciate the few moments of sound and activity. Fetching lunch. Feeding Lenora. Even assisting her in the bathroom because it’s something to do besides sitting here and thinking. While I tackle the tasks with endless chatter, Lenora does nothing in response.
No taps.
Certainly no typing.
She’s become the person I thought she was when I first arrived. Silent, still, almost a nonentity. It makes me wonder if this is what she was like with all the nurses before Mary breezed in with a typewriter. If so, does Lenora regret indulging her? Does she feel the same about me and has decided this will be the way things are now?