Lia McReedy sat on Addison’s sofa, one leg bent under the other, arms crossed, eyes glued to a piece of paper in front of her dated October 1952. She chewed the inside of her mouth as she read a letter that started: It is out of the guilt in my heart that I write this letter. When she finished, she folded the letter, set it on her leg and looked over. “Where did you find this?”
“I was looking through an old chest in a storage room and it was on the inside of my grandmother’s wedding album,” Addison replied.
“Why show it to me first and not the police?”
“I guess I felt more comfortable calling you. I hope that’s okay.”
“You understand what this means, right?”
Addison nodded. “Roxanne Rafferty shot my grandfather in self-defense. My mother, who was a child at the time, shot Roxanne, and my grandmother covered it up. She buried Norman in the woods and Roxanne in the basement.”
Lia tapped the side of her cheek with a finger. “It’s so odd to me that she didn’t just bury the bodies together. And your mother never mentioned it to anyone—not even when she was an adult?”
“Not to me or my father.”
Addison’s father, who had been sitting quietly in an armchair, spoke up. “It’s true. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Why do you think your grandmother wrote it down?”
Addison shrugged. “She probably wished she could tell someone, but there wasn’t anyone she could trust.”
“So…where’s your grandmother now?”
Addison exchanged glances with her father. “I don’t know. We haven’t seen her in years.”
***
A few hours later, Grayson Manor was once again bombarded with various representatives of the police department. Luke stated that after he’d read the letter Addison shared with him, he’d done a little digging in the hidden storage room. He said it hadn’t taken much to take apart some of the brick wall and that a single glow from his flashlight attested to the truth of Marjorie’s letter—there were the remains of a body, wrapped in plastic, behind the wall. What followed was a media frenzy that went viral—one that would forever label Grayson Manor as a “haunted house.” Addison didn’t care. The opinions of others mattered little to her now.