Page 33 of Willowbrooke
“I’m not sure; I’ll have to check.”
“What do you want to do about your uncle?” I asked gently.
“Nothing yet,” Leo said quickly. “I want to talk to Julie first.”
I nodded in understanding.
“I don’t think I can talk about this anymore tonight.” Leo’s face was drawn.
“Okay.” I smiled softly.
We didn’t say much else while Leo finished making dinner. The joy he’d felt at using his new kitchen for the first time seemed to have evaporated. But he appeared more resolute than he had at the beginning of the evening.
He had a mission now.
And I had the best bowl of pasta I’d ever eaten in my entire life…which I made the mistake of letting Leo know.
His ego had never been so out of control.
CHAPTER 7
The Diary
Ihad trouble sleeping the night Leo shared everything about his father’s death with me.
I would have thought the delicious food would have put me right to sleep, but I couldn’t turn my mind off. There was something he’d said that didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It would torture me for days to come.
It didn’t help that I could hear him below, puttering around the kitchen, cleaning up the mess from dinner, which I had offered to do myself, but he had vehemently refused. I was also pretty sure he was reorganizing the cabinets to hispreferences.
When I finally drifted off into some kind of light sleep, after the regular 2:13 a.m. thump from the attic, I was plagued by scratching and shuffling noises coming from the walls. I was positive it wasn’t from an animal, but if not an animal, I had no idea what could have caused it.
The next morning, I wasn’t even sure if it had really happened, or if it had merely been a waking dream. I did, however, find it odd that my cell phone had moved clear across the room while I slept. I was sure I had set it on the nightstand before bed, and it was on the floor, next to the window, when I awoke. Whether I had moved it, or someone else had, the fact that it wasn’t where I thought I’d left it unnerved me.
Over the weekend, similar occurrences happened both while I was sleeping and during the day, when I had been nowhere near the pink room. Random bits would move around my room, leaving me questioning my sanity.
I was positively spooked.
When I brought it up to Leo over dinner on Sunday night, he was just as perplexed. “You’re sure it wasn’t you?”
“If it was, I have no memory of doing any of it,” I assured him.
He pursed his lips, unsure of what to make of the phenomenon. “Don’t say it,” he warned me.
“What?”
Leo glared.
Ghosts.
Hauntings.
He didn’t like the idea of any of it. Neither did I, but at least it would have explained what was going on. I didn’t like the idea of being mad, myself.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Leo began, “when they start the flooring tomorrow, if you want, you can sleep in my room for a few days.”
“Oh.” I managed. “Thank you.” The offer was unexpected, but solved a problem that had been nagging at me for a while. “Are you sure?”
“If you don’t mind, I don’t—it’s not like I use it overnight.” He gave a mirthless laugh.
