A strange mix of emotions swirls through me. There’s disappointment from the reality that Ricky wasn’t the person I assumed he was. In fact, he wasn’t anyone important at all. Just a boy who took advantage of a girl so desperately lonely she gave away her innocence and, ultimately, her freedom.
But Virginia isn’t blameless. I’m angry at her. Not for being na?ve. She was just a child when Ricky came along. She didn’t know any better. But what she did to her parents was so unimaginably terrible that I simultaneously hate her, feel sorry for her, and, despite everything I’ve learned tonight, still hold out hope that Archie and Lenora are wrong.
I suppose that makes me the na?ve one.
“The murders still could have been committed by someone other than Virginia, right?”
“There was no one else it could have been, Kit,” Archie says with a sigh. “And I know it changes your perception of her. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why she did it. But I made peace with the fact that I’ll never know. I might not approve of what Virginia did, but it doesn’t make me hate her. It’s possible to love someone while hating something they’ve done.”
“I’m still trying to come to terms with it,” Lenora says as a look passes between us. I take it to mean she knows I know it was her who used the typewriter in the middle of the night, filling a page with the same accusation.
It’s all your fault
I’m stuck somewhere in between, resigned to the fact that Virginia murdered her parents yet still clinging to one last bit of hope.
“But why are you absolutely certain it was her?” I say.
“Because I saw her,” Lenora says. “Later that night, after Miss Baker departed with the baby, I heard Virginia leave her room. I went to see where she was going and saw her descending the Grand Stairs.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s guilty.”
Lenora picks up her wineglass. Before emptying it, she says, “It does when Virginia was carrying a knife.”
To this day, I’m still not sure where I found the strength to get out of bed and leave my room. Sheer force of will, I suppose, brought on by a mother’s fierce determination. Yet pain still tore through my body as I slid out of bed. My legs buckled, and for a moment I thought I’d collapse onto the floor. But I remained steady, pushing through the agony, needing to find my child.
Before leaving the room, I spotted something sitting on the nightstand.
A knife.
The same one used to sever the cord connecting me and my baby, now forgotten during the commotion following the birth. I picked it up, telling myself I needed something to use as protection. Against what, I didn’t know. Perhaps my father. Or my sister and Miss Baker. Deep down, though, I knew the opposite to be true.
I was seeking a weapon.
And if anyone needed protection, it was my father.
Knife in hand, I left my room, pushed through pain on my way down the hallway, and began to hobble down the Grand Stairs. At the landing, I stopped and listened. There were voices coming from the billiard room. One was my father. The other belonged to Ricky. And although I couldn’t make out what they were saying, both of them sounded angry.
I descended the remaining steps slowly, careful not to make a sound. I needed to know what they were saying before deciding if I should make my presence known. If their voices calmed, then perhaps it meant Ricky was successful in persuading my father to let us wed, let us keep the baby, let us live happily ever after.
I should have realized that those things only exist in fairy tales. For there was no happily ever after. Not for me.
As I reached the ground floor, I glimpsed Lenora near the top of the Grand Stairs. “Virginia,” she whispered as she nervously clung to the banister. “What are you doing?”
I refused to answer.
She’d find out soon enough.
As I continued moving to the billiard room, I heard her footfalls on the second-floor hallway. Running away, of course. Too cowardly to face the damage she’d helped create. If only she had let me run away instead, none of this would have happened.
There was noise up ahead as well, making it clear nothing about the situation had calmed. My father’s voice had only gotten louder, booming out of the billiard room and echoing down the hall.
Before I reached them, I paused for a moment at the four portraits in the hall. My father intended the paintings to make us appear like one big, happy family, secure in our status, content with our lives.
To achieve that effect, he should have had Peter Ward picture us together. A vast canvas depicting the four of us in our regal best, posed oh so carefully in one of Hope’s End’s many well-appointed rooms.
Instead, Peter had painted us separately. In the process, he accidentally depicted the family as we really were--four strangers, utterly alone, each one of us boxed in by a gilded frame, unable or unwilling to escape.
Not me, I decided.
I was determined to leave this place forever.
And I would take my baby with me.
Even if I had to kill to do it.
Tightening my grip on the knife, I then turned and entered the billiard room.
FORTY
Upstairs, the woman I’d thought was Lenora Hope is in bed but wide awake, as if she knew I’d be coming.
No surprise there.
I always had the feeling she was more aware than she let on. Virginia likely had known this moment would arrive since my first night here, when she typed those tantalizing words.
i want to tell you everything
She didn’t, yet I learned it all anyway. Right up to the moment she went searching for her father, a knife gripped in her hand.
“I ran to alert my mother, who was in her usual daze,” Lenora told me. “No one had bothered to tell her about Virginia, the urgent labor, my father’s orders to take the baby. She had no idea. But her mind seemed to sharpen as I told her what had happened—and what I worried was about to happen. She patted my cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll handle this.’ It was the last thing she ever said to me.”
Silence fell over the kitchen then. Even though we didn’t acknowledge it, I knew both Lenora and I were recalling our mothers’ final words.
Please, Kit-Kat. Please. I’ll only take one. I promise.
“I don’t think Virginia intended to kill her,” Lenora eventually said. “I think my father was her sole target and that my mother got caught up in it somehow. Collateral damage. And I suspect my sister felt so guilty about it that she then tried to hang herself.”
“That’s why I’ve gone along with everything for so many years,” Archie said. “Here, Virginia is safe. Here, no one knows what she’s done. It’s for her own good. I believe that to my very soul.”
“That’s why I don’t let her go outside,” Lenora added. “And why we always refer to her as Miss Hope. If others found out who she is and what she did—what we continue to do—it could destroy Virginia. Imagine her in some state facility, wasting away. At least here she’s home.”
But Hope’s End isn’t a home. It’s a cage built of secrets. And Virginia’s not the only person trapped in it. Lenora and Archie are, too.
I refuse to join them. That’s why I now stand at the foot of Virginia’s bed. It’s time to say goodbye.
“I know who you are,” I tell her.
She gazes at me, unsurprised. In fact, I detect a hint of satisfaction in her eyes, as if she’s proud of me for sussing everything out.
“I also know you murdered your parents.”
Virginia lifts her left hand, ready to tap a response.
“Don’t,” I say, in no mood for a denial. But I also don’t want confirmation. In a sense, nothing has changed since my first night here. Despite assuming she was guilty, I was also hesitant to find out if I was right. Once the typing started, the opposite ended up happening. I began to assume she was innocent and became hell-bent on being proven correct. It turns out I was only fooling myself into believing what I wanted to be the truth, even though deep down I knew it wasn’t.
It’s likely how my father felt right before he stopped speaking to me. The newspaper in his hand, the disbelief in his eyes, the telling himself the complete opposite of what he assumed deep down in his bones.
What they’re saying’s not true, Kit-Kat.
“I understand why you felt the need to do it,” I tell Virginia. “You had your reasons. And I hope you regret it now. You’ve had plenty of time to think about your actions. And I just wish—”
I stop, unable to articulate exactly how I feel. If there’s a word for feeling betrayed, foolish, and disappointed all at once, I’ve yet to learn it. Because the truth is, I liked Virginia. I still like her, despite everything. That’s what makes this so hard.
It’s likely Mary reacted the same way when she found out, necessitating that typed apology from Virginia.
im sorry im not the person you thought i was “I wish you’d been able to tell me everything yourself,” I say.