Haunting-Adeline

As a reward for finishing my manuscript and sending it off to my editor,
I’m trea ng myself to a nice murder inves ga on.
Daya sent over more notes that she found from the PD’s database.
Emails pour in by the minute with more details. Most of it is handwri en
reports by men with atrocious penmanship.
And with the mishandling of the crime scene, we essen ally have
nothing to go on.
My great-grandfather men oned in a report that she was ac ng
strangely for several months leading up to her death.
She was distant. Not as talka ve. Paranoid. Short-tempered with Nana,
and she was late picking her up from school several mes with no
explana on as to why.
Gigi wouldn’t talk about it with her husband, which led to several
arguments between them. In the reports, he admi ed their rela onship
had been declining for the past two years. He had begged Gigi to talk to
him about her change in behavior, but she claimed nothing was amiss.
I spend hours dissec ng Gigi’s diary entries, looking for hidden meanings
in everything she wrote. Searching for the entries where she expresses fear
and discomfort.
But whatever scared her, scared her so much that she couldn’t even
write it out in words.
Part of me wishes these journals had been found during her
inves ga on. I might’ve never go en to read them if they had been, but
maybe then they might’ve been able to solve her case.
I sigh and run my hands through my thick hair. My shoulders are star ng
to burn from my hunched-over posi on and my eyes are growing bleary
from all the reading.
A headache blooms in my temples, worsening my vision un l I can’t see
or think straight anymore.
I sit back in the rocking chair and look out the window.