The Only One Left

What's inside (8 sections)

1. The typewriter story
2. Mary Milton did not quit
3. The patient is Virginia
4. Ricky is Patrick
5. What holds and what strains
6. A note on content
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up The Only One Left because I wanted a gothic mystery with a house that felt alive. The book came out in 2023 from Dutton and runs 379 pages. Friends had warned me about the twists. I expected a Lizzie Borden retread with a cliff mansion and a silent suspect. What I got was busier than that, with a typewriter confession, a missing nurse, and a cliff that keeps losing rock to the sea. I read it fast and argued with the last third plenty.

The setup is 1983. Kittredge McDeere, called Kit, is a home health aide in her thirties who cannot find work. Months earlier her mother died of stomach cancer and Kit was accused of giving her a fatal overdose of pain medicine. Kit says she is innocent. No charges were filed, but the rumor stuck. Agencies will not send her out. Families shut the door. When a lawyer calls with a live in job on the Maine coast, good pay and immediate start, Kit takes it even though the patient is infamous.

The patient is listed as Lenora Hope.

Maine kids still chant the rhyme. At seventeen, Lenora Hope hung her sister with a rope, stabbed her father with a knife, took her mother's happy life. On a bloody night in 1929, Winston Hope and his wife Evangeline and their younger daughter Virginia died at Hope's End, the family mansion on a crumbling cliff. Lenora, then seventeen, was found alive and covered in blood. Police thought she did it. They never proved it. She said she did not do it and never spoke of it again in public. She never left the house again. Now she is in her seventies, in a wheelchair, mute after strokes, able to move only her left hand with control.

Hope's End does half the scaring. Gilded Age bones gone soft. Turrets, wide stairs, salt filmed windows, peeling paper, floors that slope toward the water. The cliff below keeps shedding chunks. Surf hits loud enough to hear through walls. Power flickers. One road in. I liked this part best. The house needs no ghosts. Erosion does the work.

The staff is small and watchful. Mrs. Baker is the housekeeper, stern and exact, full of rules about sleep times, food, and locked rooms. Archie is the older cook, quiet and loyal to the house in a way that feels personal. Jessie is the young maid, friendly and quick, always listening from the next room. Carter is the groundskeeper in his twenties, convinced he is Lenora's illegitimate grandson and heir to the money. He talks openly about blood tests and papers and hangs around the kitchen asking about family lines.

Kit's orders sound simple. Keep Lenora clean, fed, turned, calm. Keep notes. Do not upset her. Do not ask about 1929. Lenora has other plans. On Kit's first evening, Lenora points at an old typewriter on a rolling table. Tap tap with one finger. Slow work. She types a short line. I want to tell you everything.

That line got me. Kit agrees to sit by the bed at night, read pages, ask careful questions, and type when Lenora tires. Lenora will at last give her account of the Hope family and the night everyone thinks she killed them.

The typewriter story

Lenora's typed account starts well before the murders. Winston Hope is rich from factories and hard to live with. He controls money, cars, friends, futures. Evangeline Hope is brittle and often sedated on powders and tonics for nerves. Lenora at seventeen is serious and protective. Virginia, seventeen months younger, is pretty and restless, once their father's favorite. The sisters are close the way girls locked in one house get close. They cover for each other and fight and make up fast.

Then comes Ricky. He is a teenage grounds boy at Hope's End, poor and handsome, hired for heavy work. In the typed pages his full name is given as Ricardo Mayhew, called Ricky. He meets one of the sisters in secret in the garden, the garage, the cliff path. There is talk of love and running away. There is also a missed monthly and fear. A rich father would rather pay and hide than face shame.

This stretch feels familiar. Cruel rich father. Sad medicated mother. Steady sister and wild sister. Poor boy with a nickname. Hidden pregnancy. It moves because Kit keeps breaking in with present day finds. A noise in the hall. A drawer left open. The sea hitting the cliff.

Kit brings her own weight. She nursed her mother through bad months, mixing medicines on a chart and sleeping in a chair. After the death the dose count looked off and talk started. Kit says her mother asked for release and Kit refused. Sager uses that well. Kit sees herself in the woman in the wheelchair. Two women everyone thinks killed someone. That link makes Kit trust Lenora too fast.

Mary Milton did not quit

The other thread is Mary Milton, the aide before Kit. Mary did not quit in daylight with notice. She left in the middle of the night a week before Kit arrived. Her room still holds things. A sweater. A paperback with a cracked spine. A dry toothbrush in a cup. Notes about hours. A woman who plans to keep brushing does not leave that behind. That detail chilled me more than the rhyme.

Mrs. Baker says Mary got scared and ran. Archie looks away when asked. Jessie says Mary asked too many questions about the family. Carter says Mary promised to help prove he was a Hope and then vanished. Kit sleeps where Mary slept and starts looking where she was told not to look.

She finds Mary's car still in town. She hears Mary went to the library to ask about old birth records and Canada. She learns Mary took interest in blood types and paternity tests. Carter shows Kit a paper Mary got for him. It says he is not related to the Hopes at all. He is furious about it. Kit starts to fear Carter killed Mary to shut her up, then wonders if someone else did.

After a storm moves sand, Kit finds Mary on the beach below the cliff. Buried shallow where the tide could take her. Murdered.

This turns a cold case into present danger. Kit goes to police in town. They are tired of Hope's End stories and tell her not to play detective. She keeps looking because she walks the same hall Mary walked. She checks locks. She listens at night for the wheelchair on boards and for typing when no one should type.

The middle finds stack nicely. A typed page that clashes with something Mrs. Baker said. A locked cabinet with letters about payments to a woman named Berniece Mayhew, hush money sent for decades. An urn in the library that should hold ashes and holds nothing. Kit wheels Lenora outside against orders one pale afternoon and watches her face in the wind.

Jessie helps and blocks by turns. She cleans Kit's room and chats about movies. She also appears in doorways without sound and knows where old keys sit. Carter drives Kit to town and talks nonstop about his claim. On a dark road Kit gets out of his car and walks in wet shoes rather than ride with a man she fears.

The patient is Virginia

About two thirds in, the floor drops. The old woman in the wheelchair is not Lenora Hope. She is Virginia Hope, the younger sister thought dead.

The housekeeper Mrs. Baker is the real Lenora Hope.

The book explains it like this. After the 1929 night, Virginia lived but with damage to spine and throat. She could not speak or walk. Lenora, tired of blame and stares, saw a way out. She forced Virginia to take her name and her guilt. She bribed a doctor to declare the real Virginia dead. An empty urn went on a shelf. The world was told Virginia died six months after the murders. The woman in the bed took the name Lenora and took the hate. The real Lenora took a new name, kept the trust money, traveled for years, then came back as Mrs. Baker to guard the house and the story. Payments to Berniece kept the secret fed.

Once stated, old scenes shift shape. Why Mrs. Baker controlled typewriter paper. Why she raged when Kit took the patient outside. Why Archie deferred to the housekeeper on medical choices. Why Jessie watched both women so hard.

The true 1929 night was not a girl with rope and knife. It was chaos among adults. Winston had paid Ricky off and sent the baby to Canada with a nurse. Evangeline learned what her husband had done and broke. Winston turned violent first. Evangeline fought him and stabbed him. Ricky was in the house that night. On the grand stair, Evangeline, hurt and wild, pushed Ricky to kill her too. He did. Virginia, wrecked by the loss of her child, tried to hang herself. Lenora found her and moved the body to make it look like Virginia had been murdered with the others. Police arrived to find Virginia barely alive.

I sat with that a while. It clears the rhyme as town cruelty. It leaves both sisters harmed by parents and money. It also darkens Lenora, who later chose to bury her hurt sister under her own name to buy freedom.

Mary died because she neared this edge. She learned a Hope baby had lived, had grown, had a child of his own, and that Carter was not part of it. She asked about blood and Canada and Ricky. She got too close to living people who needed the past shut.

Ricky is Patrick

The last turn ties to Kit. Ricky, the teenage grounds boy, is Patrick McDeere. Kit's father.

He worked at Hope's End under a false name as a boy. He loved Virginia. He fathered her child. He took Winston's payoff and ran, then built a plain life and never told his daughter. Mary traced him and came about a blood test. Patrick killed Mary to keep his name out. He also helped Kit's mother die when cancer pain turned cruel, which means Kit's memory of that last night is wrong in a painful way. Kit did not overdose her mother. Her father did, out of what he calls mercy, and let Kit carry the rumor.

Patrick drives to Hope's End near the end to finish it. Virginia is the only witness who can place him at the murders and at Mary's killing. He means to kill her. The real Lenora steps in front. There are long speeches here. People confess in full while the cliff cracks. Archie admits his link to Ricardo Mayhew and his years of quiet cover. Patrick admits to Mary and to Kit's mother. Lenora admits to the swap and the bribes.

Then the house goes. The cliff, eaten for decades, gives way in the storm. Floors tilt. Windows pop. The grand stair splits. Patrick and the real Lenora help Kit get Virginia out, then walk back inside to die with the house as it slides into the Atlantic.

I found that ending both right and easy. Right because a house on a bad edge should fall. Easy because the sea buries proof and spares survivors hard choices. Still, I felt the punch when lights went out room by room.

After, Virginia lives with Kit for quiet months. No typewriter. Doctor visits. Then Virginia slips away one morning without a word. Months pass. Kit gets a letter.

Virginia writes she has not been fully paralyzed for decades. Four months after she tried to hang herself, feeling and strength began to return. She chose not to show it. For more than fifty years she played the still woman because the role kept her fed and kept Lenora paying. Only Jessie knew. Jessie is Virginia's granddaughter through the lost son who lived in Canada and died in 1982 after having a child. Jessie took the maid job to watch her grandmother. Now the two leave to travel. The letter holds two tickets to Paris, one for Kit and one for Archie. Years later the book closes with Virginia's obituary. She lives to 101.

That letter broke some readers I know. A woman fakes total paralysis for fifty years. She lets nurses turn her, lets doctors test her, never stretches in sleep, never breaks in fever. Sager asks a lot here.

What holds and what strains

What holds is Hope's End and the middle search. I believed the cliff, the salt, the hush ledger, the empty urn, the toothbrush left behind. I believed Kit as an aide who knows lift, wash, cream, socks, turn, note the skin. That labor grounds the gothic. Mary works as warning. She snooped for Carter, took money for tests, pushed past limits. Her death feels squalid, not grand, which fits a house that kills by rumor and money more than curse.

What strains is the stack of reveals. One identity swap can carry a book. This one adds Ricky as father plus fake paralysis plus lost heir plus hush money plus cliff fall plus Paris tickets. Each reveal comes with long confessions while danger waits. The storm waits for speeches to end. Kirkus called such devices silly and close to camp, and I see why. Carter grows as threat and heir, then the paper says no match and he fades while the true father steps in.

The blood logic wobbles if poked. A baby sent to Canada, a son who dies in 1982 after fathering Jessie, Berniece paid for decades, a 1930 doctor bribed with no trail that matters. Sager moves fast enough you may not care at midnight. I did not. I cared more next morning.

There is also a fairness question. The central document is a lie by identity, not just memory. The typist is not Lenora. Virginia cannot correct it live. Kit retells both without knowing. A mute woman with one working hand steers a house story for weeks while staff nod. It needs Mrs. Baker's help and Archie's silence and Jessie's watch and Kit's hunger to believe.

Still, I turned pages. Short chapters, typewriter pings, the rhyme at chapter heads, the storm building. Propulsive fits, even as belief stretches thin near the end. I closed glad Virginia got Paris and Jessie got a grandmother and Kit got cleared, and aware I had been led through three full confessions in a falling house.

If you like gothic houses, Lizzie Borden echoes, and nurses who keep notes, read it for Hope's End and Mary and the long middle. If you hate twists that need speeches and letters, the last eighty pages will vex you. I did both at once, which seems the Sager deal. The house falls. The sea keeps the rest.

A note on content

This is a bloody book without long gore scenes. The 1929 night has stabbing, hanging, and a suicide attempt. The present has a buried body, a drugged mother, and an assisted death. There is talk of pregnancy and forced separation from a baby, plus control by a rich father. The cliff fall injures and kills. Readers who want cozy should skip. Readers fine with crime and suspense should know justice here comes by confession and collapse more than courts. No one is tried. The sea closes the file.

FAQ

Who is the patient at Hope's End?

The wheelchair patient called Lenora is really Virginia Hope. The real Lenora lives as housekeeper Mrs. Baker after forcing a swap.

Who killed Mary Milton?

Patrick McDeere, Kit's father and the former Ricky, killed Mary after she traced his blood link to Virginia's child.

When was The Only One Left published?

It was published in 2023 by Dutton in a 379-page edition. The summary follows that text and keeps its facts aligned.