‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Frank giving Roxy money is … something to note. Potentially blackmailing him.’

‘I guess she was closer to Mary Anne than we thought too. That explains why she’s always been so nice to us … oh, hey.’ Ellis looks at me nervously. ‘Sorry I didn’t tell you about this right away. I honestly forgot. But something Lenore said m-m-made m-me think of it.’

‘What is it?’

‘You have to come back to mine to see.’ He kneads his brow. ‘We d-d-do actually need to get flowers first, though.’

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 18

Ellis and I buy the cheapest bouquet we can find from the florist on Porter – a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums padded out with baby’s breath – and march them back to the Willowwood.

Once we arrive at the head of the street, Ellis, ever-cautious, instructs me to wait for the all-clear signal to assess Peyton’s whereabouts and make sure Sylvia hasn’t returned early, and scurries off alone with the flowers in hand.

Ten minutes of unexpectedly relaxing under-tree sitting later, I get the text.

Go inside and straight up the stairs through the kitchen. Go quick.

I do as he says, passing the front desk, now adorned with our bargain bouquet; first up a cramped staircase, walled in on either side with barely enough room to raise both my arms. The top floor is clearly where Ellis and Sylvia reside, much more lived-in than its lower counterpart; a basket of laundry sits in the hallway, a pair of shoes, an overfilled bookcase. More compact than downstairs, it’s got that musk-tinged, slightly balmy smell of human occupation. There’s a ladder swung out from a hole in the ceiling that I assume leads into the attic – and I nearly jump out of my skin when Ellis pokes his head through from above.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Come on up.’

The attic’s not much bigger than my dorm, which is already small, but is rendered claustrophic due to the clutter: instruments, stuffed toys, a rail of moth-nibbled clothes, a crib, a castle of boxes – Halloween, Christmas, Ellis – School. An interminable dust-current is spotlighted by a ray of light streaming in through slatted windows on the far side. Every breath in is another powdery torrent of mothballs and must.

‘So, there’s … there’s one m-more thing,’ Ellis says, cross-legged on the floor. ‘That I haven’t shown you. I really d-didn’t think it had anything to do with this.’

I lower myself to meet him.

He hands me a piece of white paper that had obviously once been crumpled into a ball, slightly coffee-yellowed at the edges, dry to touch. ‘This turned up in our mailbox right after Nana died this April, without a stamp on it. My mom doesn’t know that I know about it.’

‘Why wouldn’t you know about it?’

‘She threw it away. I found it in the trash and hid it up here.’