Dancing with the Dead ✔

Chapter Thirty-Seven - The Revelation

If I hadn't known where to look for, I would've spent hours searching for a needle in a haystack. But thanks to the memory flash I had when Jill tried to kill me, I know exactly where to find her diary. The small black book is still hidden in plain sight, next to The Ugly Duckling in the vast library.

I waste no time and open the diary immediately. Since I'm searching for her most recent thoughts, I decide to start with the last entry. A sigh of disappointment comes out of me as I see her last entry is dated December 30th, 2017. In it, she wrote how her parents gave her a new Polaroid camera and a photo album for her birthday.

The diary still has about 100 pages left, so I doubt she had a new one. The most possible option was she moved on to write in her album, like June and Jude mentioned. But the two little children are still nowhere to be found, leaving me and Will to search for the photo album by ourselves. We spend almost an hour searching for the album with no luck.

"Lexi, come here!" Will calls. "I think I've found something."

I approach him quickly with the hope that what he found can be our answer. After all, we don't have that much time.

"What is it?" I ask.

The 12-inch by 12-inch hard-covered book he's holding has "Jill's Scrapbook #1" handwritten on its cover.

I stare at Will. "This must be it!"

Will nods, his green eyes are filled with hope before he proceeds to open the scrapbook.

The first two photos on the scrapbook are photos of Annie. Next to each picture, Jill wrote some notes about when and where she took it. Will continues to flip the page to look for any clues that may help us. Each page of the scrapbook has two to four photos taped using small paper tapes on each corner and some notes written next to them. Most of the notes only contain the dates and places, while some have greater details such as what happened and how she felt. All the pages are black in color while the notes were handwritten using silver, and sometimes gold, ink.

Jill took a lot of photos, most of them are of her friends and Annie. Starting from February 14th, 2018, the face that pops out a lot is none other than Stephen. Based on her notes, that was when they first became a couple, which was quite romantic, to be honest. Of all his photos, I find him ridiculously photogenic. Considering Jill's hobby of photography, this might be one of the reasons she was attracted to him in the first place.

Will continues to flip the pages until the last one. Unfortunately, the last photo dated back to July 2018.

"That's it?" Will asks. "I don't know about you, but the way I see it, this doesn't really help!" he continues, frustration fills his voice.

I find it rather annoying how easily he gives up in just about everything. "Calm down," I say as I close the album. When I read the title again, I notice something important.

"Look." I point to the title. "If there's a 'number one', there might be more."

He exhales sharply. Then, with determination on his face, he says, "Okay, let's keep looking then."

It takes us fifteen minutes to find the second album since it looks identical to the previous one. We waste no time and continue to observe the photos inside it. We can't find any clues that help with our murder investigation since the mystery man is still not yet photographed.

If the photos tell us anything, it's that Jonah's story proves to be true. Some of the entries detailed about her make-ups with Stephen, such as a photo of a strawberry ice cream and a huge teddy bear given by him as apologies. It seems their relationship started to have issues since their 'make-ups' happened weeks apart of each other and sometimes even days!