Izzy ran her tongue over her teeth, pressing hard against her incisor, dread slipping into the places in her mind where only questions had been before.

The first page was dated in September of the year Bix had died. They would have just left St. Lucy’s at that point.

The writing curved and swooped, delicate in a way that Izzy would have guessed just based on the descriptions she’d heard of the woman alone.

But the words were stark.

I will be dead by the end of the year.

Anger and surprise came, a quick double shot of bitterness landing heavy in Izzy’s belly. Here, here was her ghost, that echo of a death that haunted the place. It had followed her from room to room until she’d found this.

The entries that came next read like textbook escalation.

I haven’t been able to stop crying about Monroe. He gets so angry with me.

He hit me tonight. His palm left a red mark. He cried as he stared at it. I didn’t shed a single tear.

It was a slowly ticking bomb both she and Bix would be helpless to stop.

Where was that boy who bought a street painting for five dollars? His ashes were scattered beside our daughter’s.

The journal ended abruptly three days before the date of the fire.

Bix’s prediction made reality.

Izzy swallowed hard, saliva and trace amounts of blood from where her teeth had dug into the inside of her lip.

The haze of rage cleared enough for her to reread several of the passages. They were almost too damning. She all but expected to find the paper crinkled and water stained from dried tears.

Why keep the journal? Why risk it being found? It told a clear story of Bix’s abuse, one that would be hard to misinterpret.

Izzy found herself in front of Charles’s bedroom door before she realized she’d even moved, her limbs following some buried command sent along her nerves as her thoughts remained stuck on that first entry.

I will be dead by the end of the year.

There was a detached quality to her movements now. She watched her fingers curl around the metal of the handle, watched them grip and turn and push. Rote muscle memory. Would she feel the same way as those same fingers pressed against Charles’s windpipe?

Her gun bumped against her rib cage as she stepped into the room, and the simple weight of it brought her back.

Why keep the journal?

The thought pushed through again, battled the anger, dug shallow roots into the banks of her consciousness so that it would hold firm as she tried to push it away.

She listened for Teresa’s footsteps, but she must have gone downstairs. Charles was alone in the room.

Izzy tossed the journal on the nightstand and then stepped even closer to the man.