“At night,” she says grimly, and I stop breathing.
Me too.
“What part of the house was she hearing them?”
Don’t say the attic. Don’t say the attic.
Kay chews her lip. “Upstairs, I think she said.”
“The attic?” I blurt out.
“I’m not sure,” she admits, sighing. “I told her not to stay there alone.” She speaks more to herself than to me. “Told her she could stay with me if she was scared.”
Kay chews the inside of her cheek, gives me a look that says,I don’t know if I should tell you this next bit.I wait, holding my breath.
“And someone was leaving her notes.”
Oh my God. My stomach flips as I remember the sticky notes on my car and laptop. I don’t know what I was expecting Kay to tell me about Amanda, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. “Where was she finding these notes?”
“In the kitchen, the lounge room, the dining room,” Kay rattles them off, her face pale. She pauses for a moment, eyes wet with sympathy. “And in her bedroom.”
Another bolt of lightning. Tobias yelps in terror. We both ignore him. “What did the notes say?” I half yell over the thunder.
She steps back as if she doesn’t want to be a part of this any longer. “Strange things,” she says shortly. “Things no one should’ve known about.”
My heart squeezes.
Things no one should’ve known about.
Like me needing to refill my anti-depressants. Like Lizzy. Like the DVD. My forehead starts to sweat. Kay watches me silently, and for a long moment neither of us speaks. A car drives past slowly, and a silver-haired man stares at us from a tinted window. I ignore him. Kay glances fearfully at the driver, as if she’s worried to be seen talking to me. But I can’t leave yet.
“Which bedroom was hers?” I ask desperately. “Did you ever see it?”
“No,” she says softly. “I never went inside the house. I couldn’t.”
I think that’s all she’s going to say. Then she shuffles from foot to foot. “Amanda used to come over here for coffee. Once a week, usually…Sometimes she’d bring Winter,” she adds, her eyes watering.
I give her a quizzical look.
“Her black Lab,” she explains, voice heavy with grief. “Beautiful boy. Young too.”
She pats Tobias’s head reflexively, and a lump forms in my throat. “Where’s Winter now?”
She shakes her head, holds the dog a little tighter. “I don’t know what happened to him.” She frowns. “Or Amanda.”
Then she looks me right in the eye as if trying to warn me. “She was really afraid of that house.”
A chill creeps down my shoulders and settles into the small of my back. I fold my arms, shivering, and the rain comes pouring down.
“The last note she found…” Kay shakes her head. “It really shook her up.”
“When was this?”
“A few days before she disappeared.”
My skin prickles. “What did the note say?”
“She wouldn’t tell me,” she says. I get the feeling she’s replayed this over and over. Kicked herself for not intervening. “She sat on my couch for hours. I don’t think she wanted to go home. I asked her to stay here, but she wouldn’t.”
