“Thank you,” I said.
He raised the camera, prompting a sigh from me. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to have my picture taken. Even though Ricky told me I was beautiful every time he saw me, I didn’t feel beautiful. Into the sixth month of my pregnancy, I felt bloated and restless. I couldn’t even muster a proper pose for Archie, although he didn’t seem to mind.
“Perfect,” he said as I cradled my swollen stomach.
The shutter clicked, and Archie joined me on the divan. I leaned my head against his shoulder, as I had done a hundred times in the past few years. He was so big, so solid. I knew he would always be there for me, no matter what.
“Just to make it clear,” Archie added out of the blue. “If he--or anyone--ever hurts you or makes you unhappy, I won’t hesitate to kill them.”
TWENTY-FIVE
A minute after Archie leaves, Carter pops into Lenora’s room to check on us. He looks, for lack of a better word, haggard from lack of sleep.
“Guess the third floor didn’t treat you well,” I say.
He answers with a yawn. “How can any of you stand it in here? All night I felt like I was sleeping in a bed with two of its legs sawed off.”
“Right now, it’s safer than the cottage. How does the lawn look?”
“Like there’s a big hole in it,” Carter says.
“Has something like this ever happened before?”
He shakes his head. “Not while I’ve been here.”
“So why is it happening now?” I probe.
“That’s a very good question. One I can’t answer. Besides, I’m more worried about if it’s going to happen again.”
I look toward the night-shrouded window, grateful I can’t see the edge of the terrace and the ocean waves careening toward the base of the cliff far below it. Still, I wonder if after last night the mansion has shifted even more—and how much more it can go before toppling over entirely.
While I glance at the window, Carter sets his gaze on Lenora. “Learn anything new?”
I check to make sure she’s still listening to her Walkman before pulling him into my room. “She confirmed she was pregnant,” I say.
“What happened to the baby?”
“I don’t know. She stopped typing after that. She made it very clear she doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Do you think the baby was born?” Carter says, avoiding what he really wants to ask: Do I think the baby was his father?
I study his features, trying to detect even the slightest resemblance to Lenora. There’s nothing. Especially in the eyes. Carter’s are a warm hazel. A far cry from Lenora’s startling green. Yet I can’t rule out the possibility, either. We have no idea what Ricardo Mayhew looked like, other than Lenora’s description of him as incredibly good-looking. Carter’s definitely got that part covered.
“I don’t know. All she told me is that the baby is gone, which could mean anything. I even asked Archie—”
“Do you trust him?”
“No,” I say. “Because he lied. He told me Lenora was never pregnant.”
“Maybe he didn’t know.”
“It’s more likely he doesn’t want anyone else to know. Including Mary.”
Carter flinches, and I can tell he’s picturing the same thing I am. Mary on the terrace, suitcase in hand, Archie barreling toward her, twice her size.
“You shouldn’t have asked him about it,” he says, his voice going quiet. “Now I’m worried he thinks you know too much.”
I am, too. But for a reason different than Carter’s. Mine is an abstract fear that none of what we’re doing will change things. The past is in the past, Archie said. It does no one any good to start digging it up. Am I doing more harm than good by forcing Lenora to talk about the child who’s no longer with her and the night her family was slaughtered? Will Mary’s family and friends be better off knowing her cause of death was murder instead of suicide? Maybe Detective Vick was right about my having an ulterior motive for doing all this. That it’s not Lenora or Mary or even Carter I’m concerned about.
It’s me.
And what will happen if I can’t prove anything?
“He doesn’t,” I say. “Because I don’t. We only have theories, not facts.”
“So what now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Lenora will soon want to start typing again.”
I move through the adjoining door back into Lenora’s room, knowing it’s not a good idea for someone else to see me and Carter conferring in mine. I still remember the way Jessie sounded last night. Full of innuendo. Like she was suspicious—or jealous. Who knows how Archie or, God forbid, Mrs. Baker would react if they saw us together like this.
“Let me know if she does.” Carter heads to the hall, pausing in the doorway to take one more look at Lenora, checking for a resemblance that isn’t there. “And be careful. Right now, I don’t trust anyone but you.”
By the time he’s gone, it’s fifteen minutes past dinnertime. Which will make us equally as late for Lenora’s evening exercises, bath, and bedtime. I go back to my room and the lockbox under the bed, shaking out the proper amount of pills I need to mix with her dinner. The pages Lenora and I have typed remain under the rolling bottles. I wonder if more will eventually be added to the stack—and if that would make things better or worse.
Back with Lenora, I start to get ready for dinner. She’s exactly as I left her. Wheelchair. Window. Headphones over her ears. The only thing that’s changed is the Walkman.
The cassette inside no longer turns.
When I lift the headphones from Lenora’s ears, no words come out.
“It turned off?” I ask Lenora.
She taps her left hand twice against the wheelchair armrest, where it’s been since before I turned the Walkman on. The Walkman, meanwhile, sits exactly where I left it between her right hand and the side of the wheelchair. Even if Lenora had moved her left hand at some point, there’s no way she could have reached across her lap and turned off the Walkman without disturbing its position.
“How did it stop?”
Lenora gives me a blank look that’s her substitute for a shrug.
I pick up the Walkman and examine it. My initial thought is that it automatically shut off when the first side of the cassette ran out of tape. Thinking the cassette needs to be flipped, I eject it from the Walkman. There’s plenty of tape around both reels, suggesting only half of it has been played.
Since the only other thing that could have caused it to stop working is a dead battery, I slide the cassette back into the Walkman and press the play button. Jessie’s voice, muffled but unmistakable, pops from the headphones in my hands.
I hit the stop button, my mind turning faster than the reels inside the Walkman a mere moment earlier. Since the cassette didn’t run out of tape, the batteries still work, and Lenora didn’t use her left hand, I can think of only one other way for the Walkman to have stopped playing.
Lenora turned it off herself.
With a hand she can’t use.
TWENTY-SIX
It’s ten p.m., Lenora’s in bed, and I’m in my room next door staring at a Walkman she may or may not have turned off using a hand she may or may not be able to use. After an hour of obsessing over it, I’m still not sure.
One thing I’m certain of is that it’s nearly impossible for the Walkman to have accidentally shut off without Lenora using her right hand. I know because I’ve tried. Jostling it. Smacking it. I even knocked it against the side of a chair multiple times, testing to see if it was enough to bump the stop button. It wasn’t. Nothing Lenora could have done with her left hand would have somehow made the Walkman turn off if it bumped her right one.
Now I watch the reels inside the Walkman spin, waiting to see if they stop on their own for any reason other than the one I’m thinking of. A warp of the cassette tape. Faulty wiring in the Walkman itself. Just random occurrence that has never happened before and never will again. But everything works exactly the way it should, even as I keep pressing buttons.
Stop, rewind, play, stop, rewind, play.
My thoughts do a similar herky-jerky dance.
Stop.
Lenora turned off the Walkman. I’m convinced of that now. But how?
Rewind.
Because it’s possible she’s capable of more than she’s letting on. I’ve thought this before, when I realized the page in the typewriter had been moved.
Play.
If that’s true, then it means Lenora has been pretending all this time.
Stop.
But I can’t think of a single reason why she’d do that. Lenora’s day is filled with indignities. Having someone feed her, bathe her, remove her soiled adult diaper, and wipe her clean before putting on a fresh one. No one would willingly subject themselves to that.
Rewind.
Yet what about that page taken from the typewriter? And the footfalls I keep hearing inside her room? And the blur at the window and the shadow at the door? Someone is causing them—and I don’t believe it’s the ghost of Virginia Hope.
Play.
Which means the only logical source is Lenora, who’s been lying to me. Possibly about everything.