Page 55 of Our Darkest Summer

Kevin visibly stiffened. “No!” he replied, placing a hand on the safe. “I don’t want to damage it that much…we don’t know what’s inside.”

I sunk my teeth into my bottom lip. He was right. We didn’t want to destroy what was inside. I reached into the bowl of the desk again through the small hole, and my hand landed on something else that was hidden inside. I lifted it out.

A notebook. I flipped it open, and my fingers halted above the page and the yellow paper stuck to it.

My brows knot. I turned the paper, and the blood cooled in my veins as I read the name scribbled on it:

???

“Why does your pops have my mom’s journal?” Connor asked, and I answered instead of Kevin.

“He was the lead investigator,” I muttered. “He probably took it from the investigation.”

“I had no idea these were here.” Kevin cleared.

Kinsley turned the page of the journal in my hands.

My heartbeat fastened. This was it. Except it was different from the ones we found back at the house. Instead of the diary layout, this one had to-do lists. Meetings, appointments, events, and grocery shopping lists. I flipped ahead to July. The month she disappeared.

Kinsley’s warm breath tickled my face as I scanned through my mom’s days.

Appointment at Cindy’s hair salon on the second of July, a long grocery list for Fourth of July, and then?—

Flowers. After twelve years, I could still clearly see the purple flowers left on the kitchen counter.

Kinsley pulled a map out of her pocket and spread it out over the desk. She grabbed a pen and drew a circle around a building on the main street.

“If she stopped by the Sunnyside that day, then we could ask around,” Connor suggested. “Maybe someone saw her and remembers something…strange?”

“The police probably already did that when the case was still open,” Kevin answered.

“Our safest bet is still to retrace her steps from that day,” Kinsley agreed, while marking the library. “She visited Ava that day as well, right?” she asked and I nodded, watching her circle Braxton’s house next. “But instead of trying to talk to people we should try to get the security footage.”

“Right…” Connor crossed his arms. “But we could also talk to them, you know maybe it would give us a better lead.”

Kinsley folded the map back into her pocket, her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Twelve years is a long time, Con,” I voiced what she didn’t want to. “Especially when the town turned the case into an urban legend… Truth rarely survives gossip.”

After a moment, Connor nodded. “Alright, let’s get the footage.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Kinsley

The café was packedwith people when the four of us barged through the front door. Lila, Aaliyah’s older sister, was behind the counter wearing the same lilac apron she did when I was last here, but she wasn’t who I was looking for.

“Kinsley,” Aaliyah’s cheerful voice came from my left as she hurried down the stairs of their apartment above the café, “there you are, I got your text!”

I knew she did when she replied with at least fifty coffee and heart emojis.

“We need your help,” I said, and her eyes skimmed over the four of us.

Her grin widened and she herded us toward an empty booth.

“Tell me everything,” she said, twisting her crystal bracelets.

We told her what we’d found at Kevin’s. Most of all about the purple journal, the to-do list, and our plan.