The Only One Left

by Riley Sager

She’s capable of so little yet accused of so much, and I remain torn between wanting to protect her and the urge to suspect her.

My nightgown, stained red. My hands, warm and sticky with blood. The knife, still in my grip.

But I knew that looks could be deceiving. And that even prisons could appear lovely if lit the right way.

You want to know if I’m as evil as everyone says I am. The answer is no. And yes.

“It wasn’t me,” Lenora said But she’s the only one not dead

“You’re never alone when there’s a book nearby,” she used to say. “Never ever.”

With that in mind, I take a deep breath, pass through the door, and allow Hope’s End to swallow me whole.

Gloom and doom seem to have taken up residence in the corners, gathered there like cobwebs. There’s also a chill to the air—a salt-tinged, intangible something that makes me shiver.

“Miss Hope was born in this house, and this is where she will die,” she says. “Until then, she is to always remain indoors. Those are her wishes,

Gazing into Lenora Hope’s eyes feels like looking into that gilt-framed mirror and seeing my reflection staring back at me.

I’m writing it because when I die, which could be any day now, I want there to be a record of the facts. This is the truth--good and bad.

I knew my sister had no real interest in Peter, and that Peter had no interest in me. Honestly, I had no interest in him, either. But I did so desperately want someone to notice me, to see me, to understand me.

My mother assured me not to worry. That by reading, whole worlds could be explored without ever leaving home.

How strange it is to have spent so much time in a single place with someone and forget everything about it. About them.

“That’s the biggest thing we have in common,” I finally say. “That everyone thinks I also killed my mother.”

I was wrong about the sunrise. It doesn’t peek over the horizon. It stares.

I’m afraid? I’m not. Fear involves certainty. You know what you’re afraid of. I’m the opposite. Uncertain and unnerved.

It’s crushing, not having the life you’re meant to live. It weighs a man down.”

“If things were different, you know I’d have chosen you,”

Because it’s possible she’s capable of more than she’s letting on. I’ve thought this before, when I realized the page in the typewriter had been moved.

It didn’t matter if they were rich or poor, fat or thin, old or young. Their needs were so basic it was laughable.

Miss Baker was nothing but a high-class whore.

when I shook hands with Miss Baker, I was in fact making a deal with the devil.

At Hope’s End, the past is always present.”

“Do you think there’s a way to convince her to abandon this place?” “Leave Hope’s End?” he says. “She’ll never do it.”

“Paying off people was the Hope family way.

“Tell Lenora I said hello,” she says. “And that I’ll see her in hell.”

I know she thinks it’s me who will go first. Now my only goal in a life that had once been filled with many dreams and desires is to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Keeping that child away from this family was the ultimate act of kindness.

The sadness of his story leaves me convinced that Hope’s End is cursed in some way.

No one was granted a happy ending.

I might not approve of what Virginia did, but it doesn’t make me hate her. It’s possible to love someone while hating something they’ve done.”

In the process, he accidentally depicted the family as we really were--four strangers, utterly alone, each one of us boxed in by a gilded frame, unable or unwilling to escape.

Hope’s End isn’t a home. It’s a cage built of secrets. And Virginia’s not the only person trapped in it. Lenora and Archie are, too.

Even a prison becomes comforting if it’s the only thing you know.

Think of it as a variation on the game my father forced us to play. I finally won.