“Why lie about that?” I say. “Why go to all that effort to cover up everything?”
“You don’t understand what it was like for me. I was only seventeen, scared and alone. I had no other family and no one to guide me. My parents were dead. My sister was basically comatose. And suddenly I was in charge of Hope’s End, my father’s business, everything. My father’s attorney came to tell me the market crash had reduced the family business to ruins. My mother’s attorney then came to tell me I’d inherit millions from my grandparents when I turned eighteen and that Virginia would, too, if she managed to live that long.”
Lenora stares into her glass like it’s a crystal ball. But instead of the future, all she can see is the past.
“Meanwhile, the police kept coming around with their suspicions and insinuations,” she says. “The servants quit in droves. I had the others fired, worried they thought the same way as the police and might take matters into their own hands. My friends dropped me immediately. As did Peter.”
“Peter Ward?” I say, picturing the portraits in the hall, black silk crepe now hanging from three of them like party streamers. “The painter?”
“We were in love,” Lenora says. “At least, I was. After the murders, he wanted nothing to do with me. I never saw him again. Then there was my sister to care for and an estate to run and no one to help me but Archie, who did it solely out of devotion to Virginia. I knew he didn’t give a damn about me. And all I wanted was to be somewhere else—and someone else.”
Lenora looks up from her glass, seeking sympathy.
“Certainly you can understand that. You know what it’s like to be accused of something you didn’t do. To have everyone leave, to grapple with fear and grief alone. In the past six months, haven’t you wanted to change everything about your situation?”
I have. And I did. I came to Hope’s End.
“Yes,” I say. “But my options were limited.”
Lenora flinches, as if this is the first time someone has pointed out that people like her have advantages people like me can only dream about.
“Mine weren’t,” she says. “When six months passed and it became clear the police had no proof to charge me of any wrongdoing, I realized how I could escape.”
“You had Virginia declared dead,” I say.
“It was easy,” Lenora says with a nod. “Especially with someone as corruptible as Dr. Walden. I took him to the garage, showed him my father’s remaining Packards, and said he could take his pick if he declared Virginia legally dead. I threw in another car for his wife if he also claimed that my health depended on getting rest and relaxation far away from Hope’s End. That settled it. Virginia was dead, I turned eighteen and inherited not just my share of my grandparents’ inheritance but hers as well. Then I departed for Europe on my doctor’s orders. Right before I left, though, I made sure to become Mrs. Baker. And Virginia—”
I exhale, astonished not just by the craftiness of her plan but by its cruelty.
“Became Lenora Hope,” I say.
I see you nodding, Mary.
You knew, didn’t you?
Good girl.
I had a feeling you at least suspected it.
Yes, my real name is Virginia Hope, although she’s officially been dead for decades. In that time, through my sister’s sheer force of will, I became Lenora.
How this happened requires skipping ahead, I’m afraid. Don’t worry. You’ll get the full story about the murders soon. But for now, I must jump to six months after that night.
I’d been confined to my bed that whole time, unable to speak, incapable of moving anything but my left hand. Useless Dr. Walden had declared me brain dead, when the truth was my brain was one of the few things about me that actually worked. I knew from Archie, by my side more often than not, that my parents were dead and that my sister had them cremated the moment the law allowed it. I also knew that she was the one everyone blamed for their deaths, although there was scant evidence to prove it.
And I knew that my name had been changed.
Not legally, of course. That would have left a paper trail, which is the last thing my sister wanted. This was a more informal change, slipped into my life as quickly as a knife to the ribs.
One day, she strode into my room without warning and said, “Your name is Lenora Hope. Mine is Mrs. Baker. Never forget that.”
At first, I was confused. Even though I was at my weakest and most addled, I knew I was Virginia. Yet my sister kept calling me Lenora, as if I’d been mistaken. As if all my life I’d been wrong about something so defining as my own name.
“How are you, Lenora?” she said every time she peeked into my room to check in on me.
At night, she told me, “Time for sleep, Lenora.”
At meals, she announced, “Time to eat, Lenora.”
One morning, I awoke to her sitting beside the bed, my hand in hers. She stroked the back of it gently, the way our mother had done. Without looking at me, she said, “I’m leaving for a while. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Archie will take care of you until I return. Goodbye, Lenora.”
Then she was gone.
For years.
How many, I’m no longer sure. Time passes differently when you don’t speak, barely move, spend most of your time watching the seasons gradually change outside your window.
She returned as suddenly as she had departed. Marching into my room one day, she said, “I’m back, Lenora. Did you miss your beloved Mrs. Baker?”
Again, I was confused. The whole time she was away, Archie had called me Virginia. Yet here was my sister, back to addressing me as Lenora. It went on like this for months.
“How are you, Lenora?”
“Time for sleep, Lenora.”
“Time to eat, Lenora.”
I surrendered eventually. I had no choice.
I was Lenora.
The physician who replaced Dr. Walden called me that, as did every nurse I had. I got so used to it that sometimes even I forgot who I really was.
And what of the real Lenora?
She was fully Mrs. Baker, of course, taking the place of the real Miss Baker, who’d fled Hope’s End just before the murders. The only time she ever acknowledged what she’d done was one night a few months after her return. She crept into my room and gathered me into her arms. A sure sign she was drunk. My sister never touched me when she was sober.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had to do it. I had to have a life of my own. Just for a little bit.”
Since then, it’s been a game of pretend. That I’m Lenora. That she’s Mrs. Baker. That we’re not sisters but just an incapacitated boss and her devoted servant. And it’s how things will remain until one of us Hope girls dies.
I know she thinks it’s me who will go first.
Now my only goal in a life that had once been filled with many dreams and desires is to make sure that doesn’t happen.
THIRTY-EIGHT
You must think me a terrible person,” Lenora says after detailing her life away from Hope’s End. Spending two years in France. Drinking in music halls. Mingling with artists. Kissing strangers on the streets of Paris. She met an American serviceman, fell in love, got engaged, was crushed when he died. All those photographs I found in her bedroom were snapshots of that other life.
The one Virginia had dreamed about.
And the one Lenora stole from her.
“Yes.” Even if I lie, she’ll know from the look of repulsion I’m certain is on my face. “You are.”
Terrible. And selfish. And heartless.
Because Lenora didn’t just take the life her sister longed for. She took away the chance for Virginia to have any kind of life at all.
“How could you?” I say. “She was your sister. I know you didn’t like each other. But she was the only family you had left.”
“What else could I have done?”
“Told the truth.”
Lenora slams the glass down, sloshing wine. It spatters the counter like blood. “I tried! No one believed me! In everyone’s mind, Lenora Hope had slaughtered her family. I couldn’t continue to be her. I would have been as much a captive in this house as my sister. And what good would that have done? Virginia couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything. By pushing my identity onto her—”
“Against her will,” I interject.
“Yes, against her will. But by doing that, at least one of us got to enjoy a little freedom. At least one of us got to have a life outside of Hope’s End.”
“Why did you come back?”
“Europe was changing,” Lenora says as she blots at the spilled wine with the cuff of her sleeve, the black fabric sucking up the red liquid. “The storm was gathering, and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before it swept across the continent. I got out and came back here, pretending to be Miss Baker, the prodigal tutor returning to an estate in dire need of her assistance. My sister was Lenora Hope, unfortunate victim of polio and multiple strokes. Because we kept a low profile, no one knew it was all a lie. No one but Archie, who understood the benefit of keeping silent.”