Page 137 of The Only One Left

“Don’t talk about me like that,” he said.

“Why?” my mother said. “It’s true, isn’t it? You come from nothing, you’ll live with nothing, and you’ll die with nothing. You’re worthless.”

Ricky stiffened, his body coiled with tension. “I’m not.”

“Then prove it,” my mother said. “Be a man for once and prove you’re not a piece of--”

From the stairs, I screamed as I saw a flash of movement at Ricky’s hand.

The knife.

The rest happened so quickly I can scarcely recall it. A small mercy. What I do remember--the sound of the knife entering my mother’s torso, her collapsing on the landing--is horrible enough.

When it was over, I flew down the stairs to my mother’s side. It was clear she was mortally wounded. Her face had become stark white, and there was blood everywhere. It soaked into my nightgown as I screamed at Ricky to call for help.

“Help us! Please!”

The knife remained in Ricky’s grip. He stared at it in disbelief for a moment before looking directly at me and my dying mother.

“I-I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to--”

“Get out,” I said, my voice a ragged whisper.

“It’s true, Ginny. You have to believe me.”

“Get out!” I said again, this time in a roar borne of pain, anger, and fear.

Ricky dropped the knife and fled out the front door and into the dark night.

A minute after he left, so, too, did my mother. I was holding her hand when I felt the last flicker of her pulse. I kept holding it even as the skin grew cold, not knowing what else to do. My parents were dead. My child was gone. The man I had once loved but didn’t any longer had fled. How is one supposed to carry on when they have nothing left?

The only thing that pulled me away from my mother’s corpse was the knife that killed her. Still on the foyer floor, it caught the light in a way that felt like a taunt.

“Use me,” it seemed to say. “That’s what you need to do now. Here’s your way out.”

I went to it, picked it up, and considered driving it into my heart. I stopped myself before I could do so, worried that once the blade entered my chest, there’d be no heart left for it to pierce.

Instead, I walked out to the terrace, buffeted by the wind and driving rain, and threw the knife into the ocean. Something capable of such violence deserved to be in a place where no one could find it.

Yet I still wanted to end my life. No, that’s not quite it. I felt like I had to end my life. To me, it already seemed over. All those hopes and dreams I’d held close to my heart had gone with everything else. In their place was a dark void from which I never thought I’d escape. My body might have been alive, but my soul was dead.

The quickest and easiest thing to do would have been throwingmyself off the terrace. But then I’d be as lost as the knife I’d just tossed into the waves. I wanted to be found, so people would understand the depths of my despair.

I decided to go to the garage, where I knew rope was stored. I grabbed a long loop of it and carried it back inside, to the ballroom. I chose that room because it seemed the most like myself. Lovely, yes, but also empty and neglected.

In the kitchen, I heard Lenora on the phone, frantically calling the police. I should have considered how the night’s events would affect her. They were her parents, too. At least my mother was. And I was her sister. Yet I selfishly never stopped to think if she would mourn them or me. The same went for Archie, who I knew would miss me deeply.

All thoughts were pushed out of my head as I stood on a chair and tossed the rope until it was looped several times around one of the chandelier’s arms. I then knotted it around my neck the best I could.

After a tug to make sure the rope wouldn’t unravel from the chandelier, I closed my eyes, took what I thought would be my last breath, and stepped off the chair.

And that’s the full story, Mary.

Not what you expected, is it? It isn’t for me, as well. Now that you have it, do with it what you’d like. Tell the world. Or tell no one.

It’s in your hands now.

My hope, though, is that you’ll share it with someone, that it will spread far and wide, and that word of it will somehow reach my son, wherever he is, and the two of us may be briefly reunited.

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