Page 54 of The Only One Left

“You’re the one who first saw the body, correct?”

I give a quick nod, again trying not to picture Mary mostly covered by sand that had been packed over her for more than a week. She might have been completely buried in a few more days. Maybe less. I know it’s a good thing she was found before it was too late, even though I deeply wish it wasn’t me who did it.

“Walk me through it,” Detective Vick says.

I do, quickly recounting being on the terrace, noticing the seagulls, looking over the edge of the cliff, and seeing Mary.

“Why were you out there in the first place?”

It feels like a trick question, even though I know it’s not. But to answer it honestly would mean talking about strange noises and shadows moving around Lenora’s room. There’s no way I’m going to go there. Instead, I give a not entirely dishonest reply.

“Just getting some fresh air.”

I look out the row of windows that face the ocean. Outside, a pair of cops mill about the terrace. One of them paces back and forth, eyes aimed at the ground. The other keeps peering over the railing at the water below, even though Mary’s corpse was recovered more than two hours ago. Because of the steepness of the cliff, the police needed a boat to reach it. A small army of officers then stormed the narrow beach and dug Mary out before the tide rolled in again.

“What are they looking for?”

“Anything that might give us an idea of what happened,” Detective Vick says.

“But Mary fell, right?”

I continue to eye the terrace railing, thinking about how I almost tumbled over it last night. The raw panic of that moment remains fresh in my memory. First surprise, then fumbling, then pure fear. I imagine the same thing happening to Mary. A trip. A slip. A long, terrifying fall. It makes me wince. That poor, poor girl.

“It’s one of several possibilities,” Detective Vick says in a noncommittal way that makes it sound like he’s considered only one possibility.

I study his face, so expressionless it could be a mask. I’ve seen that look from him before. I know it means he’s already made up his mind.

“You think she jumped,” I say.

It makes more sense than falling, despite my recent near miss. The terrace, with its low railing and cliff’s edge access, seems tailor-made for suicide. It would be so easy for someone to climb over the railing and make that final leap.

Under normal circumstances, I’d spare another thought for poor Mary Milton, feeling sad and sorry for a woman whose personal demons drove her to take her own life. But right now I can only focus on my mother, another woman driven to suicide, and how Detective Vick refused to believe she acted alone.

“I don’t want to make any assumptions at this time,” he replies in that same maddening tone.

“Yet you were fine making them about me.”

Those assumptions eventually found their way into the local newspaper, caused me to be suspended for six months, and almost landed me in jail. They made my few friends vanish and my own father suspect the worst about me. Anger rises inside me, so fast and volcanic I think it’s about to propel me off the love seat and across the room to attack Detective Vick. Only sheer force of will keeps me in place. I sit with my arms tightly crossed, unable to make eye contact. I fear just looking at him will set me off again—and that I’ll no longer be able to control it.

Sensing my anger, Detective Vick tries to calm me by saying, “This is more than just an assumption, okay? A note was found in a pocket of Miss Milton’s uniform, indicating that she intended to kill herself.”

I don’t ask what it says. One, it’s none of my business and, two, I’m too busy wondering how different my life would be right now if my mother had left behind a suicide note. I suspect it would be very different, seeing how a note seems to be all Detective Vick needs.

“Are you aware of any reason why Mary Milton would want to take her own life?” he says.

“I don’t know. I never met her. She was gone before I got here.”

I cringe as I say it.Gonehas multiple meanings. Dead is one. Missing is another. So, too, is left, although it turns out Mary never did. She was here the whole time.

Detective Vick tries a different tactic. “Do you think she liked working at Hope’s End?”

“From what others have told me, I guess she did,” I say.

“Do you like working here?”

Caught off guard by the question, I shift on the love seat. “I just got here.”

“That doesn’t answer the question. Which is a simple one. You either like it here or you don’t.”

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