I flipped quickly through the entries, hoping for some highlighting or maybe another secret letter she had decided not to deliver. The diary covered the year Tish had turned twelve. It was painful reading. There had been crushes and bullies and mean girls and nice teachers. She wrote about my mother and how much she admired her. Was this why she hid it and told me where to find it? I already knew that Tish had idolized my mother when she was growing up. There were references to our house and how much she loved it. She wanted one “exactly like it” when she grew up. She got her wish on that one.
Tish and her mom had had their troubles. Most of it was due to her mother’s drinking. I had grown up knowing that Tish didn’t get along with her mother and that she had moved in with my parents for the last part of high school. I skimmed over the sections where a twelve-year-old Tish was trying to cover for her mother, trying to do the right thing to avoid her mother’s anger.
In November, the entries changed. Tish wrote a long section about a babysitting night at our house. She’d been watching Grace, who was a baby at the time. Tish wrote that she could tell Grace had some psychic ability but that it wasn’t what my mom had hoped for. Tish had just begun to feel that she might have some ability, a common enough fantasy at that age. She was living with a mother who was either not home or drunk. It would be wonderful to have a special “superpower.” For Tish, the fantasy had come true. After years of work and training, she had developed a name for herself as a medium and psychic. But the girl writing this diary wasn’t there yet. She’d apparently been in my parents’ room that night, looking for my mom’s tarot deck. Tish had the idea that the cards themselves were magical, and she wanted to try them out. There was a long section of justification for the snooping she had done. Then this:
I don’t know why I looked out the window. I wish I hadn’t seen them at all. I wish I had stayed downstairs where I was supposed to be. It was so gross! They were kissing and they’re so old. And she’s married! No one will believe me. Now I wonder what happened to the gun. If I tell, she will for sure find out and then what will happen? But I have to tell don’t I?
There was no special marking for this section, but when I started to read it, I knew this was why she had left me the book. But I didn’t understand it. She’d obviously seen something that wasn’t right, but who was she talking about?
According to the entries in December, she had gone to the police eventually and indeed they had not believed her. She was just the spooky girl with the drunk for a mother. They even brought in a social worker to determine whether it was likely Tish had been drinking that night. It wasn’t surprising. The word of an imaginative twelve-year-old meant nothing.
I wasn’t sure what had triggered the recent murders after all this time, but I was starting to think that Sara’s séance had been much more disturbing for one of the guests than the others.
I decided to use my new set of keys.
*
I hesitated outside Tish’s house. How long would I think of it that way? Glancing at the tree where Mac used to leave notes, I felt sadness settle over me. Tish had certainly caused some trouble with her penchant for “helping.”
I went up the steps and ignored the police tape stretched across the door. What’s one more reason for Mac to be mad? I stepped into the front hall and took a steadying breath. I imagined I could still smell blood, which was unlikely after five days and the thorough cleaning Rupert Worthington claimed to have arranged. Ignoring the flashes of memory and avoiding even a glance toward the kitchen, I went directly to the stairs. I took them two at a time and found myself on the landing outside what used to be my parents’ bedroom.
Tish had put her own spin on things since she moved in, and her taste in comfortable, casual furnishings continued into the bedroom. It was decorated in neutral tones of brown and cream. She had a king-size bed between the two front-facing windows and a comfy-looking chair by the side-facing window. I suspected that this was the window she had been looking out of when she’d seen a married someone kissing a man who wasn’t her husband.
What I couldn’t quite get my head around was that Harriet Munson lived next door. I could not, even using all of my imaginative powers, see her having an affair. She was simply too rule-oriented. Ignoring the fact that she and her husband seemed to be one of the happiest couples in town—another shocker—I just couldn’t imagine her doing anything so out of character.
I peeked through the window and tried to imagine what Tish had seen. But there was nothing to see. There was one small window on that side of Harriet’s house, and I was at the wrong angle to see anything. Unless Harriet and her mystery man had been standing at the side of the house near our driveway, which would have made them perfectly visible from the street, Tish hadn’t been looking this way.
I went to the other window and glanced out. This window faced the front, and I imagined would give a good view of the Stark’s privacy fence. I was wrong again. I could see right into their backyard. I could also see into their kitchen. The driveway ran along the side of the house to the detached garage at the back.
My understanding of what Tish had seen shifted again. I pulled out my phone to call Tom.
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