My father yelps in pain as his hands drop from Virginia’s throat. He looks down at his side, where the corkscrew juts from his torso. A dark spot surrounds it as blood seeps into his shirt.
Before he can grab it, I’m on my feet, reaching out, snagging the handle. I pull and the corkscrew slides out of his flesh with a squelch of blood. Brandishing it like a switchblade, I say, “Don’t touch her again.”
My father presses a hand to the wound. He’s hurt, but not badly. He even lets out a rueful chuckle. “I guess I deserve this.”
“Yeah,” I say, shocked by how a single syllable can contain six months of bitterness and disappointment.
“If I’d been a better father, you wouldn’t have come here. You wouldn’t have met Ginny. You wouldn’t know about any of this.”
“You pushed me away.” I try to keep my sorrow hidden, but it shows itself anyway, cracking my voice with emotion. “I needed you, Dad. When Mom died, I fucking needed you! Because what happened with Mom was awful. But—”
I stop myself, unsure if I can speak the words that need to be said.
Even now.
Even here.
“But you were right to doubt me. I left those pills out. Even though Mom swore she’d only take one, I knew there was a possibility she’d take them all.”
“Don’t,” my father says. “Don’t say that, Kit-Kat.”
“But it’s true.”
“No. You shouldn’t blame yourself. It’s my fault that you do. I shouldn’t have put that burden on you. I shouldn’t have let it get that far. I should have come forward and stopped the whole thing as soon as that article about you hit the newspaper.”
Suddenly, I’m no longer at Hope’s End. The whole cursed place disappears from my vision as I flash back to home, my father at the kitchen table, newspaper in hand. He looks up at me with watery eyes and says, “What they’re saying’s not true, Kit-Kat.”
He didn’t say that because he wanted it to be the truth.
My father said it because it was true.
He knew I hadn’t given my mother those pills.
Because he’s the one who did it.
FORTY-THREE
Shock and despair.
That’s all I feel.
Not anger. Not grief. Just those two extremes of shock and despair, feeding off each other, turning into an emotion I can’t describe because I’ve never felt it before and I pray that no one else is forced to experience it. It feels like every part of me—brain, heart, lungs—has been ripped from my body, leaving me hollow.
That I remain standing is a miracle.
I can’t think.
I can’t speak.
I can’t move.
My father, still blessed with all those qualities, steps toward me, arms outstretched, as if he wants to embrace me but knows I’ll shatter if he does.
“I’m sorry, Kit-Kat,” he says. “I know you wanted more time with her. I did, too. But she was suffering so much. All that pain. I understood why you left those pills out for her. Because you couldn’t take any more of her suffering. None of us could. So I decided to end it.”
I don’t want to listen. Yet despite all the functions currently failing me, hearing is the only one left. I have no choice but to take in every word he says.
“I didn’t force the pills on your mother. She took them willingly. We both knew it was better that way. What I didn’t intend—what neither of us intended—was for you to be blamed for it. When that happened, I didn’t know what to do. But believe me when I say I wasn’t going to let Richard Vick arrest you, Kit-Kat. I vowed to turn myself in if it came to that. But it never did. So I stayed quiet, because I knew you’d hate me if you ever found out.”
I do hate him.
Finally, a third emotion, one that eclipses my shock and despair. Those fade to background noise as the hatred takes over. But it’s a wounded sort of hate. Raw and burning. Like I’m the one who’s just been stabbed.
I can’t tell what hurts more—that he and my mother decided to end her life without telling me, thereby denying me a chance to say goodbye, or the fact that he stayed silent when the police came for me, when I was investigated by the state, when I was suspended from my job.
“That’s why I couldn’t talk to you afterward,” my father says. “It was too hard to look you in the eyes, knowing what I did, knowing I was the cause of your suffering.”
Somehow, I find my voice. “Yet you refused to stop it. You just let everyone think I killed my mother. Worse, you let me think that.”
“I shouldn’t have,” my father says. “I was wrong.”
He takes another step toward me, wincing as he touches his side. At any other moment, my caregiving instincts would kick in. I’d check the wound, try to clean it, find something to stop the bleeding. But I remain stock-still. His wound is nothing compared to mine.
I might have remained like that forever if not for a sound coming from the hallway.
A sharp clack as Lenora Hope finishes loading her shotgun before stepping into the bedroom. Upon hearing it, my father raises his hands and turns to face her.
“Hello, Lenora,” he says.
Lenora levels the shotgun barrel at his chest. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“I’m Patrick.”
Unlike me, Lenora easily matches my father’s name with the boy her sister had loved all those years ago. It even dawns on her, decades too late, that he and not Virginia is responsible for at least some of the violence that claimed the lives of her parents.
“It was you,” she says.
My father responds with a curt nod. “Mostly, yes.”
“Give me one reason not to shoot you dead right now.”
“Because my daughter shouldn’t be here to see it,” my father says as he jerks his head in my direction.
Lenora looks to me, astonished. “Did you know?”
I shake my head. As Lenora watches me do it, the barrel of the shotgun drifts away from my father to the floor. Sensing an opportunity, my father lunges forward and shoves Lenora into the hallway.
“No!” I scream, not knowing which of them I’m actually screaming at. I do it again, even though they ignore me, too intent on destroying each other. I can only run into the hallway while continuing to scream as it all unfolds like a slow-motion car crash in front of me.
My father rushing Lenora.
Smashing into her.
The barrel of the shotgun moving, tilting, firing.
There’s a blast of heat and noise as the gun goes off. A chunk of the wall behind my father explodes, spraying plaster, wood, and wallpaper. He and Lenora continue to collide, edging closer to the top of the Grand Stairs.
My father stops.
Lenora doesn’t.
She falls onto her back, the shotgun leaving her hands as she shudders down the steps and does a single flip onto the landing. I push past my father and start down the Grand Stairs, stopping after only a few steps because I notice something strange.
The entire staircase is trembling.
As is the entire house.
I look around, suddenly terrified. The light fixture in the foyer sways back and forth. From above come several thuds as furniture on the third floor topples over. From below, the earth lets out a low groan, like a beast about to wake. Hearing it, I know in my gut it’ll only be a matter of time—minutes, maybe even seconds—before it does.
When that happens, all of Hope’s End will come tumbling down.
“Get out of the house!” I call to Lenora. “I’m going to get Virginia.”
I start back up the stairs. They’re shaking so hard I can no longer stand and must crawl up them. I continue crawling when I reach the second floor, scrambling past my father.
“What are you doing?” he says, shouting to be heard over the steadily building groan of the earth and the thumping, shaking clatter it creates.
“Saving Virginia!”
“There’s not enough time!”
My father grabs me by the shoulders. I writhe in his grasp. “There is if you help me!”
We lock eyes, a lifetime of guilt and regret passing between us, unspoken yet keenly felt.
“Please,” I say. “You owe me. You owe her.”
My father blinks, as if snapping from a trance.
Then he releases me and, without another word, rushes to Virginia’s room.
I follow him inside, where the room rattles like a broken carnival ride. The tilt, often felt but rarely seen, is now a memory. In its place is a full-on slant that turns the room into an obstacle course. All around us, furniture has started to slide toward the windows, including the bed Virginia still lies upon.
My father grabs her shoulders. I take her legs. Together, we lift and carry her out of the room as the entire house pitches.
Behind me, I hear the empty bed skid across the floor and thunk into the wall.
In the hallway, vases on pedestals crash to the floor and paintings on the walls sway.
Outside there’s a cacophony of bricks raining onto the roof and terrace as, one by one, the chimneys of Hope’s End collapse.
My father and I hurry down the Grand Stairs, trying not to drop Virginia as the steps themselves buck and sway. On the landing, my father hoists her onto his shoulder, freeing my hands to help Lenora.
She refuses to move.
“We need to go!” I shout. “Now!”