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Still, a dead man’s body disappearing was disturbing. Had Jordan seen someone move it? But she didn’t even know about the man in our pool. At least, she hadn’t mentioned it, and that was definitely something that would get mentioned, if you knew about it. She would have been on the phone to the police.

I walked back to the house, leaving Jordan on her front porch, watching me. I felt her eyes boring into my back as if they were physical knives penetrating my spine. Then, as if the sensation of her watching me had been something tangible, I heard footsteps. Jordan was now walking beside me. She was carrying a turquoise notebook held closed by an elastic strap. She flipped off the strap and opened the book, studying tiny cursive script on a page near the center.

I glanced at the book, but she tilted the cover so I couldn’t read. She pulled a pen out of her pocket and jotted something in the notebook.

What was she up to? She hadn’t said a word, but she was keeping pace with me, still writing.

I turned and walked between the pine trees separating the two pieces of property. I started down the concrete steps leading to the pool area. Samantha and Patrick had done a beautiful job cleaning up the pine needles, leaves, and downed branches that had blown into the pool, as well as the grit and muck that had covered the pebbled concrete.

Jordan was still matching her pace to mine. I stopped. “Do you want something?”

“I haven’t told you everything I’ve experienced at this house. Maybe you should know.”

“Should I?”

She shrugged. She jotted something in her notebook.

What was she writing? I ached to grab it out of her hand and read it. The idea was absurd, but it planted itself firmly in my mind—it felt as if she was taking notes on my behavior, capturing our earlier conversation. Had she been watching us all this time? Had that threat—You’re next—been written by her? Torn out of this notebook? It made my skin cold, thinking she’d been keeping our house under surveillance, even before we’d moved in.

We’d changed the locks when we took possession, but in a small, close-knit community like this, was it possible she’d convinced the locksmith to cut her a key? Maybe she’d been inside our house, looking over our lives. She was an unusual person, a little creepy and definitely quirky.

I reached the pool level and began walking toward the stairs up to the deck. She remained beside me.

I stopped again. “Are you going to tell me what I should know?” I hated asking because I felt like I was playing into whatever drama she was enacting in her mind, or in the pages of her notebook.

“You didn’t seem interested,” Jordan said.

I sighed. “If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, I’m going inside. I hope you aren’t planning to follow me into my house.”

She smirked.

I lifted my eyebrows and held her gaze, waiting.

Her lips parted, but before she could speak, Samantha came running from the front of the house. “Em⁠—”

She stopped when she saw Jordan. She lifted both arms, waving frantically. She hurried to where we stood, her face twisted into panic, her eyes wide with fear.

“What I wanted to tell you,” Jordan said, “is that, when you came to my house, I didn’t tell you everything I’d seen.”

“I need to talk to you,” Samantha said.

Jordan continued as if she hadn’t heard. “I also saw someone in the house a few days ago. Before you got here.”

Had she been in our house? Otherwise, how would she have seen someone inside?

Samantha put her hands over her mouth, staring at Jordan. The pearl ring on the finger of her right hand shimmered, revealing iridescent pink shadows.

“Who?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t you know who’s in your house better than I would?” Jordan asked.

What was wrong with her? She seemed to be having conversations inside her head, then including me at unpredictable moments, leaving me confused, feeling I’d missed half of what had been said, only because I couldn’t hear the other voices.

She wrote something in her notebook and closed it, marking her place with the pen.

“Do you have something to tell me, or not?” I asked. “Otherwise, I’m going inside.”

“Don’t you care that someone was in your house when you weren’t here?”