Page 87 of The Only One Left

“Not like this.” I glance at the page in my hand, filled with proper capitalization and punctuation. “And not without help.”

“Maybe she can do more than you think.”

Kenny said the same thing last night. And I thought it myself before that, as I fiddled with the Walkman to see if it could shut itself off.

“Did Mary—” I have no idea how to phrase this without sounding insane.Did she ever say Lenora is stronger than she looks? Did she ever think Lenora’s faking this whole thing?“Did Mary ever say she thought it was possible for Lenora to recover?”

“In what way?”

Walk, I think.Shove. Kill.

“Any way,” I say. “Mentally. Physically.”

“Like, learning to walk again?” Jessie says. “No. She never did.”

“But it’s possible, right?”

Jessie leans against the bookshelf, her hands behind her back. “I was just talking about typing. I didn’t mean for you to think Lenora is running around without telling anyone. Sure, we’ve all heard stories about people suddenly snapping out of a coma or paralyzed people miraculously being able to walk again. So I guess it can happen. But probably not to someone Lenora’s age. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. That kind of thing.”

“But what if this isn’t a case of an old dog learning a new trick?” I say. “What if they’ve known this particular trick since they were young?”

“You think Lenora’s faking this?” Jessie says. “Why would she do that?”

I don’t have an answer other than that Lenora seems to enjoy keeping secrets. She’s been doing it for decades, never telling a soul what she knew about the Hope family massacre until Mary came along. And now, despite all common sense and reason, I can’t shake the feeling that once she revealed her biggest secret to Mary, Lenora decided to take it back.

If such a thing is possible.

“I’m kind of worried about you, Kit,” Jessie says. “You’re acting like Mary.”

“In what way?”

“Um, every way.”

I’d be worried about me, too, if I didn’t know what I do. That someone’s been walking around Lenora’s room. That she’s lied to me repeatedly about who it is. That she turned off a Walkman using a hand everyone thinks she can’t use.

“I’m fine,” I say, even though I’m not.

When Jessie departs, claiming she needs to dust the urns in the downstairs library—a sure sign she wants to get far, far away from me—someone who’s fine wouldn’t transfer Lenora from her wheelchair to the bed.

Someone who’s fine wouldn’t then examine Lenora’s legs and right arm, searching for signs of untapped strength, feeling for muscles tense from disuse.

Someone who’s fine wouldn’t also tickle Lenora’s palm, looking for a twitch, a twinge, a flicker of movement.

I do all those things as Lenora watches me from the bed, more wary than suspicious. I think she knows what I’m up to. If she’s capable of resisting, she shows no sign of it. Her limp right arm is easy to stretch across the mattress, palm up, fingers spread. When she sighs, as if she’s been through this before, I wonder if Mary also tried it.

I wonder if it worked.

I wonder if Lenora then felt the need to make her disappear.

With that in mind, the next logical step would be to try the opposite of tickling—inflict pain, which is more likely to induce a reaction. It would be so easy, too. Grab a syringe and needle from Mary’s medical bag. Jab it into Lenora’s right hand. Watch for the wince.

I shove the thought out of my mind. It goes against everything I’ve been trained to do. I might not trust Lenora right now—and I might be far from fine—but I’m still a caregiver.

So I cross to the desk, grab the sheet of paper I’d found in the typewriter, and read the accusation running from the top of the page to the bottom. I’m so tired that the words begin to blur, the letters rearranging themselves before my very eyes.

It’s all your fault

It’s all Kit’s fault

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