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Her corpse buried in the sand.
The big difference between Mary’s situation and mine is that she left with Lenora’s story when others were here, mistakenly believing the cover of night would keep her safe. But right now, in broad daylight, there’s no one else at Hope’s End. It’s just me and Lenora and an opportunity to finish what we started.
I’m ready to tempt fate one last time.
And Lenora’s going to be along for the ride whether she wants to or not.
I run back into the house, take the service stairs two at a time, and burst into Lenora’s room. At the desk, I grab a fresh sheet of paper and roll it into the typewriter carriage. Because Lenora might use more than one piece, I take a whole stack, setting the paper on top of the typewriter before hoisting it off the desk.
Carrying the typewriter down the stairs is harder than moving it to Lenora’s bed. The greater distance puts more strain on my arms, and the typewriter feels heavier with each passing step. To keep the blank pages on top from slipping, I bend forward and use my chin as a paperweight. At the service stairs, I realize I can’t see where I’m going. I take each step slowly, dropping blindly from one to the next. At one point I misstep and knock into the cracked wall, jostling loose a chunk of plaster that falls onto the staircase. I crunch over it on my way to the bottom.
After clearing the stairs, I shuffle through the kitchen, the typewriter getting heavier and heavier. My arms feel like jelly. My legs do, too. In the dining room, I huff a sigh of relief when I realize I never closed the French doors on my way inside. That’s at least one thing I won’t need to deal with. Tired and heaving, I carry the typewriter onto the terrace.
Lenora’s there.
Not on the grass, where I’d left her, but right there on the terrace, sitting in her wheelchair and staring at the sea.
“How did you—”
My voice leaves me when I see them.
Mrs. Baker and Archie, Carter and Jessie. They all stand off to the side of the terrace, their expressions as varied as their personalities. Carter’s is concerned. Jessie looks mildly surprised. Archie’s face is blank. And Mrs. Baker? She’s pissed.
Clearly busted, I lower the typewriter. The blank pages come loose and catch the breeze. I watch them swirl and skid across the terrace before taking flight.
Over the railing.
Off the cliff.
Into the churning water far below.
My mother would have died if I hadn’t entered her room, a fact made clear by Dr. Walden, the family physician. What wasn’t clear was if she drank all the laudanum by accident or did it on purpose. Everyone else swore it had to have been accidental. I, on the other hand, assumed my mother intended to take her own life. She remained silent on the matter, making it more uncertain.
Dr. Walden, either through stupidity or greed, continued to keep the laudanum flowing, using the excuse that cutting my mother off all at once would cause more harm than good. He recommended weaning her off the substance slowly.
As a result, nothing changed. Life at Hope’s End quickly returned to the way it had always been. My mother remained wasting away in her room, my father was frequently gone on business, and my sister pretended nothing was wrong by filling her social calendar.
The only thing that changed was me. By the end of September, my pregnancy was showing more and more. That I had managed to hide it for so long was a small miracle accomplished only through craftiness on my part and inattentiveness on the part of everyone else.
But time was running out. I knew that soon it would beimpossible to hide. Until that day came, however, I was determined to keep it a secret from my family.
Yet there was only so much I could do on my own. Food, for example, became a problem. I was ravenous all day and night, prompting a weight gain too noticeable to escape even my father’s lax attention. He put me on a diet so strict it wasn’t fit for a woman of any condition, let alone one who was eating for two. I needed someone besides Archie to sneak proper meals to me.
It was the same with clothing. My mother’s maid continued to let out my dresses, tsking at each request to alter yet another garment. I needed new clothes designed to better hide my pregnancy, which I couldn’t just sneak out and buy for myself. Someone else had to do it for me.
Then there was the matter of my health. I hadn’t seen a doctor since becoming pregnant. I spent nights lying awake worrying about how I didn’t know if something was wrong with the baby. But I didn’t dare approach Dr. Walden about an examination. I needed to see a new doctor. A stranger. One who would remain silent about my condition.
If the two of us had shared a typical bond, I would have turned to my sister for help. I’d always hated that we weren’t close, always assuming it was my fault instead of hers. In truth, it was no one’s fault. We were simply different. There was a gulf in our personalities that was too wide to overcome. I was like my mother, always feeling too much, wanting too much, needing too much. Like my father, my sister had wants and needs, too, but they were surface pleasures. Cars and clothes and societal approval from snobs just like them. They held no emotion other than ambition.
Without my sister to depend on, I required help from a member of the household staff. Someone discreet. Someone who knew how to keep a secret.
The only person I could think of was the one you’d least expect.
My father’s mistress.
That’s how I found myself standing in the southern hall on the last day of September. My father had returned from Boston the day before, looking more tired than I’d ever seen him. His mood was foul at dinner as he and my sister enjoyed a full meal while I picked at a salad designed to, in his words, “restore my girlish figure.”
After dinner, he retreated to the sunroom. A few minutes later, I followed, creeping toward the end of the hall. Noises rose from behind the sunroom’s closed doors. My father’s low chuckle and the high-pitched peal of a woman’s laugh. A laugh that wasn’t my mother’s. Even if it sounded the same, which it didn’t, I knew it wasn’t her because she was currently upstairs in her room, likely taking yet another swig from her bottle of laudanum.