She sat cross-legged in front of me, her hands wringing in her lap, eyes cast toward the carpet.

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to frame what I wanted to say in the least frightening way. I relaxed my shoulders and reached for her hands, holding them in mine.

“I saw your Barbie house.”

She slowly lifted her head and cocked it to the side in confusion.

“Were you playing with it yesterday?” I tried to keep my voice steady, nonthreatening.

She looked over my left shoulder and pursed her lips. Then she shook her head. “No, Mommy. I didn’t play with Barbie at all yesterday. I played with my American Girl dolls.”

“Really? I think you might have played with it and forgot.”

She denied it again. “But Carson wants to play with them after the movie.”

I nodded, knowing there wasn’t any way Carson had gone upstairs and created that . . . scene after he got here this morning.

I decided to move on and circle back to the Barbies after I had a chance to talk to Mark about it. “So, I found something under your bed. A board game.”

She smiled and laughed. “That’s a funny game. Amelia told me about it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Who is Amelia?” I tried to remember if I had seen that name on her class roster list. I didn’t know everyone in her preschool class and of course had lost the paper copy of the list the second week of school.

“My friend,” she said with a wide smile. “She’s really funny and nice and gives me lots of hugs.”

I wondered what kind of preschool friend would talk about a Ouija board, but Emily went to a Montessori preschool, where many of the parents were untraditional—by Winchester standards, anyway. One of the mothers sewed her own clothes and made kombucha. So I supposed it was possible that one of the parents was also into spiritualism and had a Ouija board.

“That’s great, but that’s something that Miss Jess gave me, and I had put it in a special place. I don’t like that you took it from me and hid it.” I lowered my chin.

She tucked her messy hair behind her ears and stuck her lower lip out. “Sorry, Mommy. But Amelia asked me to do it. She said I wouldn’t get in trouble.”

I shook my head. “You’re not in trouble, but I don’t understand. Is Amelia from school? When did you see her last?”

“I saw her last night,” she said with a shrug. “When it was dark out. She sat on my bed, and I told her that I was sleeping, so she said she would leave after I got the board.”

My body froze, ice running down my shoulders as they stiffened into place. I sat up straighter.