A. Renee Art

The key was exactly as Dorothy left it. Janet entered first, followed by Connor, camera on, and Caylix.

The living room contained a desk which was naturally searched immediately. Caylix found a bedroom key and Janet found a framed picture of Dorothy with a four or five-year-old Trisha and a journal, which she read through. Connor checked upstairs but only found a locked bedroom. He joined them on the couch a short time later. Janet summarized as she read.

It began when Mary Martinez had a work anniversary. She had been working for two years and Dorothy gave her a slice of cake from The Moon Café as a treat. Mary broke a vase a couple of months later. She told Dorothy that Vivian invited her to talk over tea and she felt appreciative that Mrs. Roberts saw her with potential.

“That confirms what she said in the interview,” Caylix remembered.

“Indeed,” Janet replied.

Wanda fell sick with a cancer diagnosis. Her son Derrick began splitting his time between looking after her and his work as a chauffeur. Charles was even helping with her hospital bills. Mary began taking over her work until they thought she would recover.

Scott was hired as Andrew’s assistant. One day, Andrew shouted at Mary, but Scott talked him down and even apologized to her for him. Dorothy wrote that he was a good young man. She was happy that Trisha was dating him. In addition, she wrote that Charles liked him too and even saw him as a son. Another point in Scott’s favor.

Andrew Reed was suicidal and drinking, which was why his wife left him. He was in the hospital, after Scott Brooks saved him from another episode. Andrew later said he was getting better and had planned to contact his wife again and save up enough money to move out of Painscreek. Dorothy thought to get in touch with his wife to tell her the news.

In another entry, she helped Bernard with Easter celebration invitations. He twisted his left hand while rock climbing, so he couldn’t write them. She wrote them instead. She later asked for Mary’s help to clean her house.

“Butler’s a lefty,” Connor exclaimed. “Lydia is not going to like hearing this.”

Scott fixed Dorothy’s sink one day and they talked over tea when he was done. She showed him a photo album and he borrowed one of the photos after staring at it.

“Sofia’s photo,” Caylix asked.

“I think that’s a safe bet,” Janet said.

Next, Vivian no longer wanted Trisha and Scott to be together. Dorothy was surprised since she said that Vivian liked Scott and that she was okay with them dating. Vivian and her daughter had an argument. Mary spotted the two teens meeting in the shed behind the mansion and later asked Dorothy about Mr. Roberts’ obsession with a painting in the gallery, that she saw him drinking alone in there. When she went in the room to dust later, she found the painting was of an old woman in a white headdress. Dorothy told Mary not to worry, saying it was his private business. Scott was fired later.

The deaths of Andrew Reed and Dr. Johnson were mentioned, along with them being declared accidents. She did not mention Vivian’s murder, only referring that she died and that Trisha had a breakdown because of it and was placed in the hospital and that Scott was questioned but let go afterwards. On Trisha’s breakdown, she notes that Scott had been avoiding her for some time, even before Vivian’s death. She said she was questioned by the sheriff again and she asked if they thought it was Scott. Apparently, they weren’t so sure about Scott, either.

While signing into the hospital to see Trisha, Dorothy noted that Father Matthew was visiting her. She thought it comforting of the local priest to visit her but made sure to ask Trisha about his visits. After him, her, and Charles, Derrick, Trisha’s only other close friend came to visit her. Dorothy spoke with him and he confided that his mother’s hospital expenses were so bad that even Charles’s help wasn’t enough. He had to find a second job. His mother was dying, traveling with Charles had only exposed the ugly sides of the world, and now Trisha was in pain due to her mother’s death and Scott’s avoidance of her. Dorothy could have sworn that she heard him whisper to her, “If Scott were gone, would you choose me?”

Trisha was better enough to be released from the hospital. Tensions in Painscreek were high for months after Scott’s release after questioning. Everyone knew he was the last one to see Vivian alive, even meeting with her the night she was killed, but even after police had nothing on him, everyone did their best to avoid and ostracize him. Everyone, but Trisha, who tried going to his cabin multiple times to see him, despite her father trying to stop her, only to not find him. Dorothy believed that she needed more rehabilitation. Charles drank more than usual. She swore that she could hear him crying some evenings in his office saying, “It’s my fault. I did this.”

“But he was out of town,” Connor said.

“Yeah,” Caylix said. “So what else could he mean by that?”

“The affair with Sofia,” Janet proposed.

In November ’95, Derrick punched Scott at the market. A good friendship came to an end. Two days later, Scott was found by a jogger, stabbed in the back. The frosty night saved him and he was brought to the hospital barely alive. Trisha had another breakdown and was reinstated at the hospital. She demanded to be let to see Scott, but everyone around her knew that wasn’t the best idea given her condition. Instead, Dorothy kept tabs on Scott’s condition and told her how he was improving. She promised to talk to Charles about letting Trisha see Scott once he’s ready to be discharged.

Charles thought that would be fine. Trisha seemed to improve as well. When Scott, visited often by his father, Matthew, was better enough to talk, Dorothy used the opportunity to speak with him. She asked him if he would be fine with Trisha seeing him when he was discharged. Scott said he didn’t want to see Trisha, that he could never even look at her ever again, but that he had so much to tell her. She asked what it was, but he stopped speaking and shook his head. At that point, his father entered the room, so she left. When she asked Matthew who was helping with the medical bills for Scott, he replied that he had to sell his car. Dorothy took out $50 and insisted that he’d take it without needing to pay it back. His hands shook as he took the cash. Meanwhile, the investigation into who stabbed Scott was at a standstill. Scott said he couldn’t remember anything, but Dorothy wasn’t sure about that.

By this time, more and more people were moving out of Painscreek. Dorothy decided to become one of them and added that she had turned in her resignation to Charles. She began looking for a new place in the city.

In mid-February ’96, Dorothy had heard from Scott about his discharge date, so when the day arrived, she and Trisha went to his room. However, they discovered that Scott discharged himself the previous Friday. Charles agreed to let Trisha be discharged and she immediately went to see Scott. This time, Charles didn’t try to stop her. It didn’t matter, because like last fall, she couldn’t find him. But she did find a trace of him, a letter he left behind for her.

No one had still seen any other sign of Scott during that time, including Father Matthew, who now believed his son ran away. He didn’t bother putting out a missing person’s ad, saying that the whole town had grown to hate him. He thought it was for the best and went to go pray some more for his son and, he added, for himself, to find peace. She hoped that they, like Charles and Trisha, find peace.

Janet closed the diary. “That’s it. Other than the possibility of the photo Dorothy mentioned, not a hint of Sofia.”

They noticed that Caylix was gone. Assuming she was upstairs, Connor went to go retrieve her. He called her name and saw a key in the door of the locked room he tried to open earlier. Opening the door to what turned out to be a bedroom, he saw someone with long dark hair facing away from him. She was standing in front of a closet.

Then he heard a toilet failing to flush and Caylix coming out of the bathroom behind him. “What the hell,” he exclaimed.

“Woah, sorry,” Caylix said. “I had to go, but I forgot that the plumbing probably doesn’t work. Good thing I only had to pee.”

“Weren’t you in that bedroom?”

“I started to. I left the key I found in the door, but like I said, I had to go.” She pointed a thumb to the bathroom.

Connor looked back in the bedroom, but no one was there. Caylix entered it as Janet was coming upstairs. She asked him what was wrong.

“Nothing,” he said. “Everything’s cool. Cool. Not weird. Not scary.” He followed his sister in and lifted the camera to hide his nervous face. Caylix stopped in front of the closet and opened it while her brother turned his head and camera away.

In a nightstand, Janet found a paper headline about Scott Brooks’s stabbing and another journal, this time from the 70’s.

“Here’s something,” Caylix said. “It’s a chest with some initials. ‘S.M.’”

“That has to be Sofia Miller,” Janet said. “Dorothy actually writes about her here.”

Sofia Miller was a newly hired maid in November of 1972. She was recommended by her cousin Father Matthew. According to Dorothy, she was pretty, with good manners, and was a quick and curious learner. She was well-liked by everyone, except for Wanda, who picked on her sometimes, and was sometimes gawked at by deliverymen. Typical of guys like that. Matthew would come to the mansion sometimes to check on her. Dorothy suspected that, despite being related, Matthew liked her. Then she thought she was reading too much into that. She and Sofia would talk over tea and Sofia mentioned that she didn’t have any parents, that she was an orphan. Afterwards, Dorothy decided to make the effort to care for her more.

“’Sofia was an orphan’,” Caylix wrote in her notepad. “’Cousin of Father Matthew. Dorothy cared a lot about her.’”

“That sounds like a reason to cover and lie for someone,” Connor said. “Especially if you care so much for them.”

“I guess,” Janet said. “It’s a start. Let’s see what else there is.”

Dorothy wrote about Vivian’s pregnancy, her complicated delivery of Trisha, and Charles’s mother, Magdalene’s, phone call. She overheard Magdalene’s disappointment of Trisha being a girl when she came to visit. Vivian had to stay at the hospital longer due to a breakdown. She learned that due to the complications with giving birth, she would no longer have any more children. Dorothy was tasked with tending to her needs at the hospital, leaving Sofia to look after baby Trisha. Dorothy wrote she didn’t think it was a good idea but chose not to voice her concerns stating that she didn’t want to say why.

What Dorothy feared eventually came to pass. In early February 1975, she was asked by Charles to let Sofia stay at her cottage since her pregnancy would eventually show. He took care of the expenses and told Dorothy to make up something about Sofia running errands outside of Painscreek. Dorothy didn’t think that would work, figuring that Vivian would find out eventually.

Sofia’s baby, named Vincent, was born on June 1, 1975. Dorothy tended to her and the baby’s needs. Soon after that, Vivian found out. She asked Dorothy about a letter she wrote to Charles’ mother. Somehow, the wife always finds out.

Magdalene arrived to visit a month later. Knowing about the affair, she demanded that Charles take responsibility. Unfortunately, Sofia had been missing for a few days. Vincent was gone, too. Magdalene launched a search for them, but nothing was turned up.

Then, Magdalene died of a heart attack. Dorothy figured it was all the worry and exhaustion over the search for Sofia and her baby.

Things at the mansion settled after the funeral. Charles and Vivian became doting parents to Trisha but talked very little to each other. The next year, Wanda and her six-year-old son Derrick moved out into their own home. Wanda said that it was especially better for her son that they not live at the mansion anymore. The more Dorothy thought about it, Derrick, for the most part, used to be a cheery little boy, until this past summer.

“Gold digger must have run off,” Connor said.

“Magdalene’s to blame,” Caylix retorted. “She only wanted boys, not girls.”

Janet said there was nothing after that, so she carried the two journals, and Caylix took Sofia’s chest. Connor looked around one last time and found a key and a goodbye letter from Oliver Gibson at the photo lab.

With their business concluded there, the three of them left the cottage to return to the inn.