Page 26 of The Only One Left
“I’d like a lawyer,” I said.
After that, everything fell like dominoes. A formal police investigation began, Mr. Gurlain suspended me, and I was assigned a public defender who told me I’d likely be charged with involuntary manslaughter at best and homicide at worst if the police thought I forced those pills on my mother. He recommended I take whatever plea deal they offered. The last domino—the final straw for my father—was when the investigation made the front page of the local newspaper.
Police Suspect Daughter Caused Mother’s Fatal Overdose
In the end, though, there was no way to prove I left those pills out on purpose or that I made my mother take them. I have no doubt that lack of proof is the sole reason I’m walking free today. I know Detective Vick thinks I’m responsible. Everyone does.
“Including my father,” I tell Lenora after giving her my sad story as I lifted her from the tub, toweled her off, put her in a clean nightgown and fresh adult diaper, and tucked her into bed. “He might never speak to me again. That’s why I’m here instead of there.”
I collect her medication from the nightstand and drop the bottles into the lockbox, which then goes back under my bed. Even though there’s no way Lenora could reach them on the nightstand, I can’t be too cautious. Not after what happened with my mother.
Back in Lenora’s room, I place the red call button next to her left hand so she can easily use it.
“I’ll be right next door if you need me,” I say, which is what I also told my mother every night I was caring for her.
Lenora looks up at me, apprehension dulling her green eyes. My stomach clenches as I realize what it means.
Even she thinks I’m guilty.
I guess that makes us even.
My birthday dinner was unbearable. Such an unhappy affair, despite all the effort put into it. There was spring lamb, leek soup, and potatoes roasted in rosemary.
The dinner was attended by only me, Miss Baker, my father, my sister, and a special guest at her request--Peter. Although there was a place setting for my mother, she sent her maid to inform us that she felt too weak to come down to dinner.
For dessert, the kitchen staff wheeled in a massive three-tiered cake with pink frosting and birthday candles ablaze. I tried to appear enthusiastic as I blew them out. I truly did. But since everything felt so awful, I couldn’t quite manage it.
Not that anyone noticed. My sister was preoccupied by flirting with Peter and my father was too busy ogling the newest maid, Sally. I could have grabbed a handful of cake and shoved it into my mouth and only stern Miss Baker would have batted an eye.
After dinner, I went upstairs to see my mother. She was in bed, of course, the duvet pulled to her chest. She looked so small and pitiful that it was hard to believe she had once been a great beauty.
“The most beautiful girl in Boston,” my father liked to boast back when my sister and I were younger and my parents had at least pretended to love each other.
I know he was telling the truth. In her youth, my mother had been astoundingly beautiful. It didn’t hurt that she also hailed from one of the wealthiest families in New England. That fact, combined with her good looks, made her irresistible to my father, who was New Money through and through. A striver of unchecked ambition, he set his sights on Evangeline Staunton.
It didn’t matter that all of Boston whispered about how she had taken up with one of the servants, scandalizing her family and edging herself to the brink of being disowned. My father still pursued her with vigor.
My mother, of course, enjoyed the attention. More than once, I’d heard her described as a rose blossoming in sunlight. My father’s sun must have shone bright, because in a matter of weeks they wed. My mother got pregnant immediately after and my father built Hope’s End.
Years later, when his attention began to wane, my mother--like any flower removed from the light--withered. There was nothing roselike about her the night of my birthday. Pale, shriveled, and thin to the point of gauntness, she was all thorns.
“Hello, my darling,” she said, using the term of endearment meant only for me. My sister and I each had one, chosen by our parents the day we were born. My sister was dear. I was darling.
Although that night, my mother murmured it in a way that made me unsure if she was addressing me or the brown bottle of liquid resting on the pillow next to her.
Laudanum.
Her cure-all, although as far as I could tell, it cured nothing.
“Did you have a happy birthday?”
Certain it was indeed me she was talking to, I lied and told her that I did.
“I do wish we could have celebrated it in Boston,” my mother said.
As did I. To me, Boston was another universe I was only allowedto enjoy once a year before being whisked back to the banality of Hope’s End. It had everything this place didn’t. Restaurants and shops, theaters and cinemas. The last time we visited was right after Christmas. I tasted champagne for the first time, rode a swan boat in Boston Common, went to the movies, and saw Mickey Mouse in “Steamboat Willie.” I couldn’t wait to return.
“Perhaps my next birthday,” I said hopefully.
