Stop.
Not necessarily. Maybe Lenora has no control over what her body can and cannot do. It sometimes happens in patients with paralysis. Sudden muscle spasms can occur like an electric shock to their system, moving muscles against their will, just like what happened when I checked her reflexes my first night here. Now that’s something that could have caused her to shut off the Walkman.
My finger’s still on the stop button when I hear a noise.
A heavy thud.
Lenora, I think when I hear it a second time. She’s moving around. Again.
I hurry through the adjoining door into Lenora’s room. Inside, it’s as still and silent as a tomb. Outside, waves gently lap at the base of the cliff. Lenora appears to be asleep. Eyes closed, flat on her back, blanket to her chin. I tiptoe to her bedside and listen to the steady sound of her breathing.
All is well.
Except for more noise. Footsteps this time, shushing over the carpet in the hallway. I go to Lenora’s bedroom door, open it a crack, and see Mrs. Baker passing by. A white-robed blur holding a— Is that a shotgun?
My unspoken question gets an immediate answer when Mrs. Baker halts and does a half-turn in my direction. Clutched in her arms is a shotgun, its double barrel propped against her right shoulder.
“They’re outside,” she says.
“Who?”
“Reporters. They’ve been loitering at the gate all day. It’s either them or boys from town who’ve hopped the wall and now they’re prowling the grounds.”
When Mrs. Baker hurries off toward the service stairs, I follow, unsure who’s in bigger danger, us or the trespassers. If they’re teenage boys and anything like the ones I went to school with, then they’re mostly harmless. Mrs. Baker, on the other hand, is armed.
From the kitchen, we move into the hallway, where I glimpse movement through the front-facing windows.
A dark figure, streaking by.
Then another.
And another.
In the foyer, Mrs. Baker throws open the front door and marches outside, shotgun barrel leading the charge. The night is foggy, with mist languidly curling over the lawn. In the haze, two more dark figures zip by, bringing the number of known trespassers to five. They all carry flashlights, the beams cutting through the dense fog like lasers.
“You’ll leave right now if you know what’s good for you!” Mrs. Baker shouts at them.
The trespassers scatter in all directions, footsteps squishing on the damp lawn and flashlights bobbing in panic. Once a safe distance from the house, one of them stops and turns, backlit by the moon-drenched fog.
“It’s Lenora!” he yells. Then he calls out, “Killer!”
That settles it. They definitely aren’t reporters.
Another one joins him, shouting, “Killer!” before the others also start chiming in. Their voices ring out in the night, echoing through the fog.
“Killer! Killer!”
The trespasser who’d started the chant—the ringleader, apparently—keeps shouting it after the others have stopped, adding one more word to the insult.
“Killer bitch!”
I flinch when I hear it.
Like he had yelled it at me.
About me.
I bolt past Mrs. Baker and hurtle into the frigid night, not thinking about what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. All I can focus on is catching the punk who said it, shaking him by the shoulders, and making sure he knows I’m innocent.
The dark figure starts running when he sees me coming, his sneakers slipping on the dew-slicked grass. It gives me the extra second I need to catch up just before he can get away. I lunge forward, grab him by the shirt collar, and yank. His feet slide out from under him, and he drops to the ground like a sack of wheat. The flashlight flies from his hand and rolls across the grass, its light flickering. In that stuttering glow, I leap on top of him, surprising him and surprising myself even more.
Yet there’s another surprise in store for both of us.
Writhing in the grass beneath me, the trespasser looks up at me and says, “Kit?”
No matter how shocked he is, I’m doubly surprised.
It’s Kenny.
“What are you doing here?” he says.
Winded, I slide off him and plop onto the grass. “I work here. What are you doing here?”
“Just having a little fun with the boys,” Kenny says as he sits up.
“Aren’t you a little old for this shit, Kenny?”
“Yeah,” he says, now grinning the same way he did whenever I met him at the back door. “But it’s not like it’s hurting anyone.”
He’d be singing a different tune if Mrs. Baker had shot one of them, which I wouldn’t put past her. A woman like her surely has an itchy trigger finger.
“You really work here?” Kenny says. “At Hopeless End?”
I sigh. So that’s what they’re calling it now. “I do.”
“Who’s your patient?”
“Who do you think?”
Kenny blinks. “No way! What’s she like?”
“Not a killer bitch,” I say.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Kenny says, eyes to the ground. “I didn’t mean anything by it. That’s just what everyone says about her.”
“They’re wrong.”
“Then what’s she really like?”
“Quiet,” I reply, which says everything while also revealing nothing.
I look down the long driveway to the front gate, where the rest of Kenny’s friends have gathered. At least it’s fully closed tonight. Not that it matters. One of Kenny’s “boys” is boosting the others over the brick wall. At the top, another reaches down to help him up. Gate or no gate, it proves that literally anyone could have come onto the property and killed Mary.
One of Kenny’s friends shouts at him from atop the wall. “Hey! You coming?”
“In a minute!” Kenny calls back.
“Do you guys do this often?” I say as his friends vanish over the wall.
“Not since high school,” Kenny says, which in his case was only two years ago. “A few of us were drinking and decided to come see if what everyone’s saying is true. You know, about her dead nurse.”
“What about her?” I sit up straighter, genuinely curious about what people in town think about Mary’s death. So far, the only outside opinion I’ve been privy to is Detective Vick’s. “What are they saying?”
“That Lenora Hope killed her.”
Of course they do. I should have known not to put any stock in what my fellow townies are saying. “That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“There’s a reason Lenora hasn’t been seen in decades.” I stand and brush the skirt of my uniform, now wet from the grass. I then reach down and help Kenny to his feet. “She can’t walk. Or talk. Or even move anything but her left hand. She’s harmless.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m her caregiver,” I say. “I’ve spent more time with her than you.”
“I know you think I’m stupid.” Kenny says it without a hint of anger. Instead, there’s a gentle resignation in his voice that makes me reconsider our relationship, such as it was. I honestly didn’t think he cared what I thought. Now I’m not so sure.
“I don’t,” I say.
He gives me a sad smile. “It’s okay. I am stupid. About a lot of things. But I think that sometimes helps me see things that smarter people like you overthink.”
“Like me?” I say, both flattered he considers me smart and insulted that he believes I overthink things.
“What I mean is that sometimes facts just get in the way. Sure, you’re Lenora Hope’s caregiver and you think she can’t hurt anyone.”
“Because she can’t.”
“You’re still overthinking,” Kenny says. “There’s more to everyone than meets the eye. You, me, even Lenora Hope. Look at us. Back when we first decided to . . .”
“Fuck,” I say, because that’s all it was.
“Right. Back then, I knew what happened to your mom and what everyone was saying about you. But I didn’t spend any time thinking about it. I just knew in my gut that you were a good person.”
A lump forms in my throat. No one has said that about me for a very long time. That it comes from Kenny, of all people, makes me understand just how much my father’s silence has hurt me. He’s the one who should be telling me this. Not the guy I started sleeping with just because I was starved for human contact.
“Thank you,” I say.
“No problem,” Kenny replies with a shrug. “But on the flip side, sometimes your gut tells you something else. So while Lenora looks like she can’t do much, maybe, like you, there’s more than meets the eye.”
There’s certainly more to Kenny than I expected. Back when we were having no-strings afternoon sex, I had no idea there was this kind of wisdom inside him. But before I can give him too much credit, he grabs my waist, pulls me close, and sloppily kisses me.
I push him away, worried that Mrs. Baker is still watching from the front door.
“It’s not going to happen, Kenny.”