Page 26 of One Last Breath

“Kindness doesn’t mean weakness,” I clarify. “You can choose a career that your parents disapprove of without flaunting it in their faces and telling them to deal with the fact that you don’t want to fit their mold. As an example.”

“It must be so easy for you,” she sneers.

The alcohol must be affecting her for her mood to swing so suddenly. A moment ago, she was confiding in me like I was a friend. Now she’s staring hatefully at me. She’s clearly projecting her anger onto me because I’m the most visible older adult right now.

I decide it’s time for me to leave this conversation. “No, it isn’t. My mother spared no expense making me feel worthless for my choices in life. I punished her for this by being as emotionally distant as I possibly could. It’s one of my life’s greatest regrets.

Or, instead of leaving the conversation, I could share one of my deepest secrets with an angry drunk. There must be something in the air here that prevents me from making a good decision.

“Well, I don’t plan on being emotionally distant,” she says. “I plan on disappearing.”

I’m sure she doesn’t intend to shock me the way she does, but I am struck speechless regardless of her intent. She sounds so much like Annie right now that it terrifies me.

She sees that terror and smiles with more than a little contempt. “I think I’ll turn in. Thank you for the conversation, Mary.”

She leaves without waiting for a response, which is wonderful because I don’t have any.

I stare out at nothing and wait for the pounding in my heart to subside.

“Have you ever thought about running away, Mary? Just leaving everything behind and disappearing?”

What if that’s what Annie did? What if no harm befell her, and she just decided that she didn’t want her life anymore? If that’s what really happened to her, a part of me would hurt worse than if I discovered she was killed. If the choice to remove herself from my life was hers and not a tragic accident or a vicious evil perpetrated on her by another, I don’t know if I can handle it.

So I won’t think about Annie right now. I’ll focus on Lila Benson. I can deal with Annie later.

It’s a familiar thought, and the guilt that follows is equally familiar.

It’s an unavoidable thought, and the guilt is just as unavoidable.

Do we really make our own choices? Or are we always who we’re meant to be and the idea of free will is nothing more than bullshit fed to us so we don’t ask too many questions and find answers we don’t really want?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Leah returns from vacation tomorrow. When she does, I’ll have no reason to be in anyone’s bedroom again. If I am to gain any information from their rooms, it will have to be today.

I’m not sure what I expect to find, if anything. Part of me thinks I’m just desperate for answers.

And that’s not untrue. I have two different mysteries: Deirdre McCoy’s and Lila Benson’s. I’ve chosen to focus on Lila, but there’s a good chance that Lila became a mystery because she was digging into Deirdre McCoy.

I have four different suspects: Elizabeth remains a strong contender with a grasp on reality that seems tenuous at best and a paranoid and obsessive personality. Christopher has hinted at a remarkable capacity for manipulation, and he is easily the most physically dangerous person on the estate. If Lila met a violent end, he is the one who would have the easiest time facilitating that end.

Violet seems unlikely. She is old and rapidly growing frail. Unless Lila was infirm or disabled in some way, it’s not likely Violet could have overpowered her.

But she could overpower even Christopher if she had a gun. And she is the most likely subject of Lila’s investigation. If she killed Deirdre McCoy, then that’s proof of her capacity for violence, and while she might be succumbing to dementia now, that doesn’t mean she was incoherent four years ago.

Still, I have a hard time seeing Violet as the reason the governess disappeared.

Annabelle, however, is starting to look really “good for it,” as they say in detective novels. She bears a great deal of resentment and anger in general and resentment and anger toward Lila in particular. I have seen firsthand how that anger can boil over, sometimes in an instant.

Annabelle is a simmering kettle with a lid clamped tightly over her. From time to time, some steam escapes through a pressure valve, but what happens when the steam forms faster than the valve can release it? What happens when someone closes the valve?

I don’t think Annabelle would plot to murder Lila. She’s not a cold-blooded killer. I do, however, believe that in a fit of anger, she could very well explode and do something without thinking.

And today, I hope to find evidence of that. Or evidence that exonerates her.

Or hey, maybe I’ll get lucky and find an in-depth chronology of every single event as it happened and not need to investigate anything else.

I chuckle at that as I rifle through Annabelle’s drawers. I don’t feel wonderful about this, but I need answers, and this could be my last chance to find one. In my first mystery while working with the Ashford family in New York, I come across the answer to the case by digging through a box in my employer’s closet and finding evidence that she covered up the cause of her husband’s death. I’m hoping for similarly damning proof here.

---