My mother’s eyes were lost in shadow. “So Button would have left this album in the house and brought the other ones here. Knowing it would be destroyed. But why?”
I nodded, seeing the date again written on the photograph I’d found in the van. May 30, 1984. I remembered talking with Jayne after she’d found the saltshaker in her room and wanting to know if I’d been the one who put it there. “I thought maybe because it had the year I was born on it. You thought I might want it as a souvenir.”
My thoughts spun and bounced, refusing to settle in the obvious place. I thought of Jack initially avoiding my mother after his return from Alabama, and then the fiasco with Jayne at the party where, if I now admitted to myself, it had looked more as if he was comforting her than anything else. And then Jack’s attempts to speak with my mother, and Rebecca telling me that Jack had found an incredible story idea but couldn’t move forward with it because it could hurt people he knew and loved.
A loud crack of thunder rent the air. I threw back my head and shouted, “Jack! Jayne! Where are you?” I wondered if it was my imagination or if I had really heard a muffled voice.
“The cat,” Ginette said, pointing toward the stairs with her flashlight. “I think it wants us to follow it.”
Feeling like a stupid heroine in a horror movie who runs up the darkened stairs in a spooky house, I followed the cat, with my mother close behind me. My flashlight caught the flash of the fluffy end of a tail and we dashed after it around the landing and then up to the second floor, then down the hallway to Button’s bedroom and through the partially opened door.
“Jack? Jayne?” I yelled again.
“In here!” It was Jack’s voice, coming from the bathroom—the same one I’d been trapped in. Where I’d seen Anna’s reflection in the mirror, with hollowed-out eye sockets and bruising on her neck.
I might have hesitated, but Jack was inside. My Jack. And I wasn’t going to leave him there. “We’re here, Jack. We’ll get you out.”
I saw the doorknob twist, and then heard the door shake as he pulled on the knob. “Hang on,” I said, looking for a key or something to tear down the door. I thought back to my own ordeal, and how Sophie had simply turned the knob. I held the cool brass knob in my hand for a moment before I gave it a gentle twist.
The door opened easily and I tumbled inside as Jack simultaneously pulled on the door. His familiar arms wrapped around me and I felt his kisses in my hair. “Oh, Mellie. There’s so much I have to tell you.”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions when I saw you and Jayne. And then when I heard Marc’s announcement—”
“Shh. We’ll talk about it all later. We need to find Jayne first.”
Ginette shone her flashlight in our faces. “Where is she?”
“I’m not sure. We were in the secret staircase and we found Hasell’s notebook, and a whole lot of partially filled medicine bottles and empty syringes. It was the proof I needed that her mother slowly poisoned her. That’s why Anna had the secret stairs put in—so she’d have access to Hasell without anybody else knowing.”
MOM SICK. I must have said it out loud, because Jack looked at me. “It was a message from Hasell. She was trying to tell us that her mother was sick.”
The house shuddered around us like a giant awakening, the air inside suddenly electrified.
“That’s when the lights went out,” Jack continued. “A pair of hands shoved me out the hidden door and it slammed shut behind me. Jayne told me not to worry, that she knew how to fight Anna. It was pitch-dark and I couldn’t see her, and she didn’t answer when I called her name. I went to the kitchen to call you, and on the way back up the stairs I thought I heard a child asking for help, and it seemed to be coming from this bedroom. When I didn’t see anyone, I stepped inside the bathroom and the door slammed shut behind me.”
“Did you see Anna?” I whispered.
“No. But before I went into the bathroom, I did see that.” He directed my hand to turn the flashlight beam across the room to the rocking chair and the talking doll that sat staring at us, its eyes dark and glassy. I stepped back as the whirring mechanical sounds began, screeching and scratching louder and louder. “Now I lay me down to sleep.” It stopped abruptly, which was a good thing because I would have thrown it against a wall to make it stop. Or asked Jack to do it because I didn’t think I could have touched it.
The cat jumped off the bed and looked up at us. “I think the cat wants us to follow it again,” I said.
“What cat?” Jack asked, staring at the exact spot where I’d trained the flashlight.
“The black one standing right in front of us,” I said, wiggling the flashlight. I noticed that the cat’s fur appeared completely dry despite having been outside in the pouring rain. And there hadn’t been any wet paw prints on the floor, either.
“I can’t see it.” He looked at me with confusion.
Ginette moved closer. “It’s right here,” she said, pointing a gloved finger at the cat, sitting in the middle of the circle of light.