The only one left, p.2
The Only One Left, page 2
“You know how this works, Kit,” Mr. Gurlain says. “I make the assignments, the caregivers follow them. If you’re uncomfortable with that, then I suggest we part ways permanently.”
I would love to do just that. I also know I need a job. Any job.
I need to start building back my savings, which has dwindled to almost nothing.
Most of all, I need to get away from my father, who’s barely spoken to me in six months. I remember with a clarity so sharp it could break skin the last full sentence he directed my way. He was at the kitchen table, reading the morning paper, his breakfast untouched. He slapped the newspaper down and pointed to the headline on the front page.
A floating feeling overcame me as I stared at it. Like this was happening not to me but to someone playing me in a bad TV movie. The article included my yearbook photo. It wasn’t good, as photos go. Me trying to muster a smile in front of that blue backdrop set up in the high school gymnasium that appeared muddy and gray when rendered in dots of ink. In the picture, my feathered hair looked exactly the same as it did that morning. Numbed by shock, my first thought was that I needed to update my hairstyle.
“What they’re saying’s not true, Kit-Kat,” my father said, as if trying to make me feel better.
But his words didn’t match his devastated expression. I knew he’d said it not for my sake, but for his. He was trying to convince himself it wasn’t true.
My father threw the newspaper into the trash and left the kitchen without another word. He hasn’t said much to me since then. Now I think about that long, fraught, suffocating silence and say, “I’ll do it. I’ll take the assignment.”
I tell myself it won’t be that bad. The job is only temporary. A few months, tops. Just until I have enough money saved up to move somewhere new. Somewhere better. Somewhere far away from here.
“Wonderful,” Mr. Gurlain says without a hint of enthusiasm. “You’ll need to report for duty as soon as possible.”
I’m given directions to Lenora Hope’s house, a phone number to call if I have trouble finding it, and a nod from Mr. Gurlain, signaling the matter is settled. As I leave, I sneak a glance at the bulletin board behind his desk. Currently, three caregivers are without assignments. So there are others available. The reason Mr. Gurlain lied about that isn’t lost on me.
I’m still being punished for breaking protocol and tarnishing the agency’s sterling reputation.
But as I push out the door into the biting air of October in Maine, I think of another reason I was given this assignment. One more chilling than the weather.
Mr. Gurlain chose me because Lenora Hope is the one patient nobody—not even the police—will mind if I kill.
TWO
It takes me less than an hour to gather my belongings. I learned early on that a caregiver should pack light. A medical bag, a suitcase, and a box. There’s no need for more than that.
The medical bag is filled with the tools of my trade. Thermometer, blood pressure cuff, stethoscope. My parents gave me the black leather tote when I was first hired by Mr. Gurlain. Twelve years later, I’m still using it, even though the zipper sticks and the leather is cracked at the corners.
The suitcase is filled with a toiletry bag and my clothes. Bland, inoffensive slacks and cardigans ten years out of date. I’ve long ago given up trying to be stylish. Comfort and thrift matter more.
The box is filled with books. Paperbacks, mostly. They once belonged to my mother and bear the loving wear and tear of a voracious reader.
“You’re never alone when there’s a book nearby,” she used to say. “Never ever.”
While I appreciate the sentiment, I also know it’s a lie. For six months, I’ve been surrounded by books, and I’ve never felt more alone.
All packed, I peek into the hallway to make sure there’s a clear path to the back door off the kitchen. My father came home for lunch, which he sometimes does when a job site is nearby. He’s now in the living room, watching TV and eating a sandwich while sunk deep into his La-Z-Boy.
In the past six months, the two of us have become experts at avoidance. Full weeks went by in which we never saw each other. I’ve mostly kept to my room, venturing to the kitchen only when I was certain my father was at work, asleep, or out with the girlfriend I’m not supposed to know about. We haven’t been introduced. I’m only aware of her existence because I heard them talking in the living room last week, surprised by the sound of another woman’s voice in the house. The next night, my father snuck out like a schoolboy, either too afraid to admit he’s started dating again or too ashamed to risk my bumping into his new lady friend.
Now it’s me sneaking out, moving on tiptoes as I make two trips to my car, one for the suitcase and medical bag, one for the box of books. On the second trip, I find Kenny leaning against my Ford Escort. Clearly, he saw me with the suitcase and came out of the house next door to investigate. Staring at the box in my hands, he says, “You moving out?”
“For now, yeah,” I say. “Maybe for good. I got a new assignment.”
“I thought you were fired.”
“Suspended. It just ended.”
“Oh.” Kenny frowns. Rare for him. Normally he only sports a horny, hungry look. “Quickie before you go?”
Now that’s the Kenny I’ve gotten used to seeing since we started sleeping together in May. Like me, he’s currently out of work and living with his parents. Unlike me, Kenny is only twenty. He’s my dirty little secret. Or, more likely, I’m his.
It started one afternoon when we were both lazing in our connecting yards at the same time, me with a Sidney Sheldon paperback, Kenny with a joint. We made eye contact across the lawn a few times before he said, “Not working today?”
“Nope,” I replied. “You?”
“Nope.”
Then, because I was bored and lonely, I said, “Want a beer?”
Kenny said sure. Which led to drinking. Which led to small talk. Which led to making out on the living room couch.
“You want to fuck or something?” Kenny eventually said.
A month into my suspension and full of self-pity, I sized him up. He wasn’t bad-looking, despite the mustache that drooped like a dead caterpillar under his nose. The rest of him was much better. Especially his arms, which were wiry, strong, and tanned. I could do—and have done—much worse.
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Why not?”
When it was over, I vowed never to do it again. I was eleven when Kenny was born, for God’s sake. I remember his parents bringing him home from the hospital, my mother cooing at him, my father slipping an envelope of cash into his dad’s sweaty palm. But when Kenny showed up at the back door two days later, looking like a stray dog seeking scraps, I let him in and guided him to my bedroom.
That’s how it’s been once, twice, sometimes three times a week. I know the score. This isn’t romance. Half the time we don’t even talk. And even though I feel guilty about it, I also know I needed something besides reading to get through the long, lonely days.
“My dad’s inside,” I tell Kenny. “And my new patient is expecting me.”
I don’t tell him just who that new patient is. I’m afraid of what he’ll think of me if I do.
“Sure, I get it,” Kenny says, doing little to mask his disappointment. “See you around, I guess.”
I watch him walk the short distance back to his house. When he goes inside without a backward glance, a pang hits my heart. Not sadness, exactly, but something mighty close. It might have only been sex, and it might have only been Kenny, but at least it was something and he was someone.
Now there’s nothing and no one.
I place the box and suitcase into the trunk before making one last trip into the house. In the living room, I find my father watching the noon news because that’s what my mother used to do. It’s a habit, and for Pat McDeere, old habits die hard. On the TV is a clip of President Reagan giving a speech about the economy while Just Say No Nancy stands primly beside him. My father, who hates all politicians regardless of party, lets out a derisive snort.
“Bullshit, Ronnie,” he mutters, his mouth full of sandwich. “Try doing something that’ll help guys like me for once.”
Standing in the doorway, I clear my throat. “Dad, I’m leaving.”
“Oh.”
There’s no surprise behind the word. If anything, my father sounds relieved.
“I’m back on the job,” I add when he doesn’t press for details. “My new patient’s a stroke victim. Lives out on the Cliffs.”
I say it hoping he’ll be impressed—or, at the very least, intrigued—by the idea of rich people trusting me enough to take care of someone. If he is, he doesn’t show it.
“Okay,” he says.
I know the one sure way to get my father’s full attention is to tell him the name of my new patient. Just like with Kenny, I don’t even consider it. Knowing I’ll be caring for Lenora Hope will only make my father think less of me. If such a thing is possible.
“Do you need anything before I go?” I say instead.
My father takes another bite of sandwich and shakes his head. The pang I’d felt outside returns with another kick. Harder this time. So hard I swear a chunk of my heart has broken off and is now dropping into the depths of my stomach.
“I’ll try to check in every two weeks.”
“No need,” my father says.
And that’s all he says.
I hover in the doorway a moment—waiting, hoping, silently pleading for more. Anything will do. Goodbye. Good riddance. Fuck off. Anything but this hostile silence that makes me feel like nothing. Worse than nothing.
Invisible.
That’s how I feel.
I leave after that, not bothering to say goodbye. I don’t want to be met with silence when my father refuses to say it back to me.
THREE
Duran Duran blasts from my car stereo as I follow a road that hugs the rocky coastline, climbing higher and higher until the Escort shimmies and the rough waters of the Atlantic become blurs of white crashing against strips of sand far below. In my rearview mirror is an area that is definitely the Cliffs. It practically screams old money, with massive houses clinging to the craggy bluffs like gannet nests, half hidden behind brick walls and swaths of ivy.
How the other half lives.
That’s how my mother would have described those cliffside dwellings with turrets, widow’s walks, and bay windows facing the sea.
I beg to differ. Not even the other half can afford to live at the Cliffs. The area has always been—and always will be—rarefied air. It’s home to the cream of the crop, perched over everyone and everything, as if God himself had placed them there.
“Yet here you are, Kit-Kat,” my mother would have said. “On your way to a job in one of these places.”
Again, I would disagree. Where I’m heading isn’t anyone’s idea of a prime destination.
Hope’s End.
Until today, I’d only heard it referred to simply as the Hope house, usually in that hushed tone reserved for tragic things. Now I know why. Hope’s End strikes me as a startlingly apocalyptic name for an estate. Especially considering what happened there.
My knowledge doesn’t extend far beyond the rhyme. I know that Winston Hope made a fortune in shipping and built his estate on the rocky coast of northern Maine and not in Bar Harbor or Newport because the land here was mostly undeveloped and he could have his pick of pristine ocean views. I also know that Winston had a wife, Evangeline, and two daughters, Lenora and Virginia.
And I know that one long-ago October night, three of them were murdered—with the fourth member of the clan accused of doing the killing. A seventeen-year-old girl, no less. No wonder I thought that morbid rhyme I first learned on the scrubby playground behind the elementary school was made up. It all seemed too Gothic to be real.
But it happened.
Now it’s town legend.
The kind of thing kids whisper about at sleepovers and adults don’t like to whisper about at all.
Lenora, the only one left, claimed to have had nothing to do with it. She told investigators that she was asleep during the murders and only knew about them after she woke up, went downstairs, and discovered the rest of her family dead.
What she couldn’t tell the police was who else could have done it.
Or how.
Or why.
Nor could Lenora explain why she wasn’t targeted by the killer, which led the police to suspect she was the one who did it, even though no one could prove it. All the servants had conveniently been given the night off, eliminating any possible witnesses. With no evidence physically linking her to the crimes, Lenora was never charged. But one need only look to that schoolyard chant to see what the public thought. The rhyme’s first line—At seventeen, Lenora Hope—fully establishes that she’s to blame for everything.
I’m not surprised. There’s no such thing as presumed innocence.
I know that from experience.
When the town passed judgment on Lenora Hope, she hid away in her family’s house, never to be seen again. But that didn’t stop people from trying. When I was in high school, it was common for groups of boys to dare each other to sneak onto the property and peek into windows, angling for a glimpse of Lenora. As far as I know, none of them ever got one, which earns Miss Hope some grudging respect in my book. I would love to be able to disappear.
Up ahead, the land rises even higher, and the road inclines to meet it. The Escort does another shimmy as I spot a brick wall in the sun-streaked distance. It’s tall enough to block out any hint of what’s behind it and old enough that the road curves around it, as if in deference.
I follow the curve, driving slowly until I see spray-painted words on the wall. The graffiti, neon blue on stately red brick, tells me I’m in the right place.
ROT IN HELL LENORA HOPE
I blink at the words, wondering if I should press ahead or drive away as fast as I can. I know the answer. It’s the one I can’t afford.
So I continue on, nudging the Escort closer to the ornate gate covering a gap in the vandalized wall. On the other side, the driveway slices across an emerald lawn toward the Hope house itself.
Looking at it now, I wonder why anyone ever called it that.
This is not a house.
It’s a mansion.
Something I haven’t seen in person since my parents took me on a day trip to Bar Harbor when I was fourteen. I remember how my father spent the whole day complaining about the rich bastards who’d built the palatial homes there. God knows what he’d say about Hope’s End, which eclipses those stately mansions in that snooty town. It’s bigger. Grander. This wouldn’t be out of place on Dallas or Dynasty or any of those other silly primetime soaps my mother used to watch.
Three stories tall and seemingly as wide as a cruise ship, the mansion is a marvel of Gilded Age excess. The walls are redbrick. Around the front double doors and all the windows is marble detailing that serves no purpose except to show how much money the Hope family once had. A ton of it, to judge by the amount of sculpted curves and curlicues on display. The windows of the third floor retain the marble but jut from the pitched roof, which is topped by a dozen narrow chimneys that look like candles atop an ornate birthday cake.
At the gate is a small intercom system. I roll down my window and stretch to press it. Thirty seconds pass before it crackles to life in a burst of static, followed by a woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
It’s not a question. In fact, the way she says it is packed with as much impatience as three letters can hold.
“Hi. I’m Kit McDeere.” I pause to allow the source of the voice to also introduce herself. She doesn’t, prompting me to add, “I’m with Gurlain Home Health Aides. I’m the new care—”
The woman interrupts me with a terse “Come up to the house” before the intercom goes silent.
In front of the car, the gate starts to open, giving off a nervous shimmy, as if spooked by my presence. It creaks as it slowly swings wider, making me wonder how often Hope’s End welcomes guests. Not a lot, I assume, when the gate rattles to a stop even though it’s only halfway open. I inch the car forward, trying to gauge if there’s enough room to pass by. There isn’t. Not if I want to keep both of my side mirrors, which I very much do. My budget, such as it is, doesn’t include car repairs.
I’m about to get out of the car and push on the gate myself when a man’s voice calls out in the distance.
“Is it stuck again?”
The source of the voice comes closer, pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with fallen leaves. He’s handsome, I notice. Mid-thirties. In very good shape, as far as I can tell, under his flannel shirt and dirt-streaked jeans. He has a full beard and hair grown a little too long so that it curls slightly at the back of his neck. I’d be interested under different circumstances. Completely different. Living-another-existence different. Just like car repairs, my life doesn’t have room for romantic entanglements. And no, Kenny doesn’t count.
“I don’t know about the other time,” I say through the open window, “but it’s certainly stuck now.”
“You should have said times,” the man replies, flashing a smile that’s endearingly crooked. “This is, like, the tenth. I keep forgetting to add it to the list of the hundred other things I need to do around here. Are you the new nurse?”
“Caregiver,” I say. A necessary correction. Nurses go to school. Caregivers like me get specialized training—a state-mandated 180 hours in Maine—teaching us the basics. Checking vitals, dispensing medication, light physical therapy. But explaining all of that to a stranger takes more time than it’s worth.
“Then let’s get this gate open so you can start.” The man pulls a pair of work gloves from the back pocket of his jeans. Making a show of putting them on, he says, “Safety first. I’ve learned the hard way—this place can bite.”
