Page 59 of The Only One Left

“The last time you saw her, how did she act?”

Lenora starts typing, stops to give it some thought, starts over. The result is a strange beast of a word.

weirnervous

I study the word, which is a pretty accurate summation of my own current state. “Which is it? Weird or nervous?”

both, Lenora types.

“Had she been acting this way for a while?”

Lenora taps the keyboard twice. Yes.

“Did Mary ever mention hearing strange noises at night?”

She gives the keyboard two more taps. Another yes.

I’m hit with a memory of what Jessie told me my first night here.

I think she was scared. Hope’s End isn’t a normal house. There’s a darkness here. I can feel it. Mary did.

Even though Jessie assured me it was a joke, I’m now starting to think it wasn’t. Not entirely.

“Do you know if she ever found out what they were?” I say.

Rather than tap, Lenora types out her answer.

no

“And that’s what made her weird and nervous?”

Lenora bangs out two more words.

and scared

My heart hiccups in my chest. So it is true. Maybe Jessie knew because Mary told her or maybe she just subconsciously suspected something was amiss. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that something at Hope’s End frightened Mary Milton.

“What was she scared of, Lenora?”

I watch Lenora’s hand slide over the keyboard in a way similar to the planchette on Jessie’s Ouija board. Eight keys and one press of the space bar later, I see the answer I’d been expecting all along.

my sister

My sister knew I was in love. Sisters can tell such things. Even ones who never get along, which certainly was the case for the two of us.

“Who is it?” she asked on one of those rare occasions we found ourselves in the same room at the same time. Usually we managed to steer clear of each other. But that night we both chose to occupy ourselves in the library.

“I have no idea who you’re referring to,” I replied as I sat by the fireplace, reading one of my mother’s romance novels that I ordinarily would have found beneath me. I wanted to write serious literature and normally read only that. I started to feel differently once I fell in love with Ricky.

And it was love.

Love at first sight, to use the cliche. In my case, though, it was true. The moment I saw Ricky, I knew I was in love with him. It was impossible not to feel that way. Not only was he the most handsome man I’d ever seen, but he understood me in a way no one else did. I could tell from the way he looked at me. He didn’t see a wealthy man’s spoiled daughter, content with flirting and flouncing about in pretty dresses. He saw a young, intelligent woman with hopes, dreams, ambition.

He saw the person I wanted myself to be.

“You’re so different from the rest of your family,” he told me that first night, after we’d spent an hour talking on the terrace.

“In a good way, I hope,” I said.

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