And Mary is dead because of it—a horrible truth temporarily forgotten in a night filled with them.
“I can’t stop thinking about Mary,” I say. “How she was killed for no reason whatsoever.”
Carter looks away from the window long enough to say, “You still think she was pushed?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know anymore.” He sighs again. “I’m not Lenora’s—sorry, Virginia’s—grandson. So there’d be no reason for someone to kill her because of that.”
“But she knew all the other secrets about that place,” I say. “Lenora’s true identity. Virginia’s guilt. The fact that both have been lying about it for decades. Someone felt the need to stop her before she could reveal it all.”
“So that leaves either Archie or Lenora.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I don’t think so.”
Both Lenora and Archie laid bare all their secrets tonight. Yes, I’d forced Lenora’s hand when I told her I knew she wasn’t really Mrs. Baker. But both were forthcoming after that. They did what Virginia had promised to do my first night at Hope’s End—tell me everything.
What they didn’t do was swear me to secrecy or threaten me in any way. If one of them was so concerned about Mary knowing the truth that they felt the need to murder her, then why am I still alive?
Because I’m not a threat to them.
I doubt Mary was, either.
But she was to someone.
My left hand slips off the steering wheel, leaving a smear of blood, sticky and hot. Using my right hand to steer, I glance at the wound. It’s still bleeding and probably infected, but I’ll survive.
That gate, however, should be melted into scrap metal.
I wipe my hand on the skirt of my uniform, not caring about the stain it will leave. I’ll never be wearing it again. In fact, I won’t even be a caregiver again once Mr. Gurlain finds out I quit, fleeing Hope’s End without even closing the damn gate behind me.
Another thought occurs to me, about another time the gate was left open.
“Hey, Carter,” I say. “When did you say you found the gate open?”
“The day Mary died.”
“I meant the day. What day of the week?”
“Monday.”
“And what time?”
“Midmorning. Why?”
Because Carter said he assumed it was left open after the groceries were delivered. But Archie told me those arrive on Tuesdays. A fact confirmed by all those receipts I found under Lenora’s bed.
That means the gate had been opened for a different reason.
Not to let someone enter and leave, but to let someone leave and come back undetected. I did it myself earlier tonight. Opening the gate when I left for Ocean View Retirement Home and leaving it like that so I wouldn’t need to call the main house to be let back in.
Since the gate was open Monday morning, it’s possible it had been like that since the night before.
“The lab already had your blood sample, right?” I say.
“Yeah. I got it drawn the week before. All they needed was Virginia’s blood.”
“Which Mary was supposed to get Monday night for you to bring to the lab the next day.”
“Which never happened,” Carter reminds me.
We’ve entered town, the streets I’ve known my entire life lit by the dull glow of streetlights. We pass Ocean View, where Berniece Mayhew is likely watching TV this very minute, and then Gurlain Home Health Aides. I make a right, heading to my father’s house two blocks away. Even though I should be thinking about what I’m going to tell him when I get there, my mind is preoccupied with something else.
“How long does it take to get a blood sample analyzed?”
“About a day,” Carter says.
“So if you took a sample to the lab on, say, a Sunday night, they’d have the results Monday night?”
“I guess so.” Carter eyes me from the passenger seat. “Why are you so focused on that?”
Because it seems to be exactly what happened. Someone left Hope’s End on Sunday night, leaving the gate open so they could return without anyone realizing they were gone. Carter noticed the open gate on Monday morning. He then left it open overnight because he intended to leave for the lab early Tuesday. During that time, someone could have left and returned once again.
Someone like Mary.
Coming back from the lab on Monday night.
With the results of a blood analysis performed on a sample she brought there the night before.
I slam the brakes, and the car comes to a screeching stop in the middle of the street. Carter looks at me, one hand braced against the dashboard and his body still thrust forward from the sudden stop. “What are you doing?”
“It was you,” I say.
When she was pushed off the terrace, Mary wasn’t leaving with a suitcase that contained a bunch of pages typed by Virginia and a sample of blood about to be tested.
She was coming back with the results.
“You knew Virginia wasn’t your grandmother,” I say. “Mary drew her blood and took it to the lab a day early. Because your bloodwork was already done, they could tell pretty quickly if it was a match. It wasn’t. And when Mary told you the results, you—”
“Killed her?” Carter says. “Why would I do that?”
Because he wanted Hope’s End. He changed where he worked, where he lived, his entire life. All because of the possibility he might be related to the infamous Lenora Hope and could one day inherit everything she owned. When Mary told him that wasn’t the case, he did whatever he could to hide that fact.
“You did it,” I say. “You killed Mary.”
“Do I look like a killer to you?”
He doesn’t. Then again, neither does Virginia. Yet he’s as guilty as she is. The only difference between them is that she’s now harmless.
Carter, however, isn’t.
I shoot a glance up the street, weighing my options. My father’s house sits on the next block. I can see the warm glow of the porch light, beckoning me home. I can make a run for it and hope Carter doesn’t catch up, or I can force him out of the Escort and speed the rest of the way home. I pick plan B. Being inside the car seems like the safest bet.
I shove my right hand into my pocket, fumbling for the corkscrew. I pull it out and hold it up, its pointed tip aimed at Carter’s side. He sees it and raises his hands.
“Jesus, Kit. There’s no need for this.”
“Get out of the car,” I say.
Keeping his hands where I can see them, Carter unfastens his seat belt and pulls the handle of the passenger door. It clicks open, setting off a warning beep because the car’s still running.
“You’re making a mistake,” he says. “I swear to you I didn’t do it.”
“I don’t believe you!”
Anger courses through me, making my blood pump so hard I can feel the cut on my hand pulse. He lied to me. Just like Virginia lied to me. The pain of their twin betrayals stings like a third-degree burn. I jab the air with the corkscrew, forcing Carter closer to the open door.
“Kit, please!”
I jab the corkscrew again, this time lunging forward until its tip is a breath away from Carter’s neck. He scrambles out of the car and stands in the street, calling to me as I speed away, the passenger door flapping like a broken wing.
Knowing Carter can still easily catch up to me, I aim not for the driveway but the yard, thumping over the sidewalk and skidding to a stop mere feet from the front door. I burst from the car, Carter’s loud and fast footfalls echoing up the street behind me.
“Kit, wait!” he calls.
I do the opposite, running to the front door, flinging it open, slamming it shut behind me. Carter reaches it just as I turn the deadbolt. He pounds on the door, pleading with me.
“Kit, please! You’ve got it all wrong.”
I back away from the door, unsure what to do next. I need a phone to call Detective Vick, peroxide and a Band-Aid for my hand, and to find my father, so I can finally reveal the truth about my mother’s death.
I head to the living room, expecting to find my father in his La-Z-Boy, waiting up for me like he did when I was a teenager. Only his chair is empty. As is the living room. And, it seems, the whole house.
“Dad?”
I move down the hall, to the bedroom he once shared with my mother but now sleeps in alone. Peeking through the doorway, I spot a suitcase on the bed.
One that doesn’t belong to him.
It’s smaller than his battered suitcase, which I remember from so many family vacations. Nicer, too. Quality leather as dark as brandy. Its single flaw is a broken handle, which dangles from the suitcase, held on at only one end.
My vision narrows, darkness pushing in from all sides until it looks like I’m staring down a train tunnel. But there’s no light at the end of it. Only confusion as I zero in on the suitcase’s lid. My hand shakes so hard I can barely lift it open.
When I do, I see a test tube with blood inside it and a stack of typewritten pages. I scan the first line of the top one.
The thing I remember most--the thing I still have nightmares about--is when it was all but over.
A sob croaks out of me. I can’t hear it because my pounding heart is loud in my ears. A shock. I’m so heartbroken I’m surprised it can even beat at all.
Because I know what my father did to get this suitcase.