Haunting-Adeline

along with a weathered note.
Daya and I glance at each other, our eyes connec ng with mutual
confusion and trepida on.
I pick up the pictures first, immediately recognizing a younger version of
Gigi in them. Most of them, her smiling red lips stare back at me, the same
man predominant in all the photos.
“Who is that?” I mu er, not expec ng any real answer at the moment. I
don’t recognize the man. He’s not pictured in any of the photographs that
were hanging on the wall when I moved in.
Once I renovated the house, I decided to take them all down. I had
decided that they’d judged me enough a er the Greyson debacle.
Zade fucked me in that hallway last night—that’s as far as we made it
before he pinned me up against the wall and took me from behind. When
Zade and I had le the bedroom this morning, we had both discovered I
had gouged nail marks into the paint. It was my only anchor with his hand
firmly gripping my hair, bowing my body back, and using it as a rope as he
fucked me into oblivion. I had collapsed a er that orgasm, and he was
forced to fuck me on the rug, right smack in the middle of the hallway.
I’ll never look at that spot on the rug or the wall the same.
So, I can only imagine how judgy their frozen eyes would be a er not
only seeing their descendent actually get railed this me, but by her stalker
no less.
Thank god I took those down.
“Is there anything wri en on the back?” Daya asks, flipping over a few
photos herself to look. I flip over mine and see a date wri en.
January 8 th , 1944.
Several months before Gigi had started wri ng about her stalker.
In the picture is Gigi, smiling brightly up at the camera, her hair pinned
into the type of curls you only saw in the 40s. Next to her, the unfamiliar
man has an arm wrapped loosely around her, a slight smirk on his face.
Something about him seems familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.
“No names on this one," I observe, flipping over a few more pictures. All
with dates but none that reveal the iden ty of the man.
We spread the photos out and arrange them in chronological order. The
last picture is two weeks before her death.