Page 40 of The Only One Left

“I have another question, actually.” I pause, waiting for her to stop, which she does with obvious reluctance after taking three more steps. “Were you in Miss Hope’s room last night?”

“Now that you’re here, I have no cause to enter Miss Hope’s quarters.”

“So that’s a no,” I say.

“Yes, dear. A definite no.”

“But I thought—” I look down at the tray, stalling. “I thought I heard someone walking around in there last night.”

“Walking?” Mrs. Baker couldn’t look more incredulous if I had mentioned aliens or Santa Claus. “That’s ridiculous.”

“But I heard the floorboards creaking.”

“Did you investigate?”

“Yes. I didn’t see anyone.”

“Then perhaps it was your imagination,” Mrs. Baker says. “Or the wind. Sometimes, when it hits the house just so, it makes all sorts of noise.”

“Does anyone else go into Miss Hope’s room on a regular basis? Like Archie? Or Jessie?”

“The only person who’s supposed to frequent Miss Hope’s quarters is you,” Mrs. Baker says. “So I suggest you get back there before she wakes.”

“Yes, Mrs. Baker,” I say, feeling the urge to curtsy the same way Jessie did yesterday. I’d probably do it, too, if not for the tray in my hands. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

I head into Lenora’s room, finding her awake in a triangle of morning sun that gives her a disconcertingly angelic glow. Rather than squint like I did, Lenora appears to luxuriate in the light. She has her head tilted back, mouth slightly open, from which escapes a contented sigh.

The patch of sunlight slowly moves across Lenora’s bed as I prop her into a sitting position and feed her oatmeal with her morning pills crushed in. By the time I get her cleaned, changed, and through her circulation exercises, the sunlight’s slid off the mattress and onto the floor in a tidy rectangle. Lenora eyes it from her wheelchair as I check her vitals and make sure the bruise on her forearm continues to heal. When that’s over, her gaze slips to the typewriter.

She remembers last night.

Part of me thought she’d forgotten.

A bigger part of me wishes she had.

Because whatever she intends to type, I still haven’t decided if I want to see it.

Lenora’s mind, though, is made up. She moves her gaze from the typewriter to me, giving me a look that’s half anxious, half hopeful. One without the other probably wouldn’t have been able to sway me. But the combination of the two makes me realize this has nothing to do with what I want.

It’s what Lenora wants.

And right now, she wants to type.

I still have no idea why. I can’t think of any reason she’d wait so long to talk about that night. If she was innocent, she would have told her story decades ago.

Unless she thought no one would believe her.

Yesterday, Mrs. Baker told me Hope’s End was a place where young women are given the benefit of the doubt. That’s not true everywhere. It’s true hardly anywhere. Perhaps Lenora tried to tell her story all those years ago and no one believed her. Or, worse, no one even listened.

Maybe she thinks I will.

And that I’ll believe she’s innocent.

Because she thinks the same of me.

That idea—that Lenora’s urge to talk stems not from shared guilt but possibly shared innocence—is ultimately why I wheel her to the desk, where the page from last night sits next to the typewriter. Even though I don’t remember removing it, I must have. I wrack my brain, trying to recall the events of last night.

Lenora offering to tell me everything.

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