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CHAPTER 65

Bend, Oregon Friday, August 2, 2024

SLOAN AND NORA STARED AT EACH OTHER AS NORA HELD THE PHOTO showing Tilly with a knife in her hand.

“She killed her,” Nora said. “Tilly killed Annabelle.”

Sloan swallowed hard and looked back to the photo, trying to process what she was seeing, how these photos came to be, and who had taken them.

“I’m still . . .” Sloan said, shaking her head. “Who took these photos?”

“And what happened to Preston?” Nora said. “And you. What happened to you that night?”

Slowly, as if the answer dawned on them at the same time and from the same place, they looked to the drying rack and the final photo that hung there. Enough time had passed so that the image was clearly formed. Nora pulled it off the clip. With her mouth agape, she reached over to the wall and clicked on the overhead light. In her hand the photo showed Ellis eerily staring into the lens of the camera and holding a baseball bat. Sloan’s mind made the connection to Dr. Cutty’s impression of Baker Jauncey’s head wound, which she believed had been caused by a baseball bat.

“Nora!” a voice yelled from somewhere outside the darkroom.

It was Ellis.

“Nora!” he yelled again, this time his voice was louder and closer.

Nora and Sloan looked at each other with panicked eyes. They’d left the cellar door off the kitchen opened and footsteps pounded down the steps. They both startled when Ellis pounded on the darkroom door.

“Nora, are you in there?”

Nora held her finger to her lips for Sloan to stay silent. But when Sloan placed her trembling hand onto the table to steady herself, she knocked over one of the trays containing the developing solution. It fell off the table and crashed onto the floor.

“Nora,” Ellis yelled. “Open the door!”

The door shook as Ellis pounded from the other side.