On the other side of town, Melisa and Jennifer were talking while on their lunch break at the coffee shop. Melisa remarked, ‘We’re friends with three little idiots. They’ve got too many things to get their noses in.’

Jennifer replied, ‘I’ve gotten the text messages too, you know.’ ‘You have? Where on earth did you get an anonymous stalker?’ asked Melisa.

‘I have been getting texts like Jonah and the other three since the day we found Em, which was yesterday. It’s been a vicious cycle of do I go to the police about it or keep it on the down-low,’ said Jennifer, who was about to take a sip of her coffee.

Melisa then said, ‘I’d rather go to Officer Hale and ask her about it.’ It’s ridiculous that you’ve now got the same stalker as the rest of them.’

‘I just got pulled into the drama and have been dealing with it like Jonah. He got pulled into it because Dominic is directly affected,’ said Jennifer.

Just as Melisa was about to make a snarky remark, her timer for her break went off. As she went inside to clock back in, Jennifer finished her coffee and prepared to head back inside. As soon as she was ready, her phone chimed. Expecting a text from Noemi about the state of the text tracing, she opened her messages finding another message from ANONYMOUS.

There’s a killer family secret involving your friends, my dear. Hold on to your pants, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

-Z

Jennifer took a screenshot and sent it to Noemi right as her break was about to end. She shuddered and went inside to clock back in for the rest of her shift. As she went into the back room, she heard a mysterious giggle that caught her off guard. When she exited the room, there was no one there except the usual customers ordering their coffees and reading their computers or books.

Now clocked back in, Jennifer greeted a surprise visitor in the form of Anna, who was wearing a navy blue hoodie which was now looking black due to the rain now pouring outside. Anna asked her, ‘How’ve things been since I ran off last night?’ Jennifer replied, ‘Like shit. I keep getting text messages from a rando.’

Anna said, ‘That’s rough. But, what do you say about going out to the mall to blow off some steam later?’ Jennifer ignored her and went straight to the coffee maker to retrieve a latte that Anna had ordered online. Anna gave her a disgusted look, yet on her way out made a giggle that reminded Jennifer of the one from just minutes earlier.

Hours later, back at the barn, Dominic and Willa had been talking with Max about his dad and what he remembered about him, despite only being 5 when he had died. Max answered, ‘He was just a picture-perfect father. He worked a 9-5 job for the local paper, and he just cared about me and my siblings a lot. They’re too young to remember what happened.’

The trio continued to talk about Max’s father until Jonah and Noemi showed up with coffee in hand for all of them. Max initially turned down the offer of coffee until Noemi told him that Melisa had made him his favorite drink instead. The group then went into specifics about what Felicity had mentioned to Dominic, Jonah, Max, and Willa earlier in the day after the morning with Jennifer in tow. As Max was about to let Noemi know what he asked, he instead told her, ‘Felicity told me that she was the one that found my dad’s body almost 20 years ago. I was just so heartbroken to hear that someone so close knew what happened to my dad.’

Jonah asked, “Wait, what happened specifically to him?’ Max replied, ‘He was murdered, specifically shot to death. Us kids weren’t allowed to see his body in the casket because Mom was mortified for us.’

As the group finished their conversation for the night, Jonah made a toast to them as one group trying to figure out the secrets strewn about in their personal lives. Right as he made the toast, the lights went out in the barn, and the group could hear nothing except the wind and a mysterious giggle that sounded like nothing that they had heard before. Noemi remarked, ‘Someone get the breaker!’ To which Willa, with her phone light on, replied, ‘Already on it.’

Willa reset the breaker, which brought the lights back on, yet the giggle was still lingering on in their minds, especially Dominic and Max, who had their suspicions on potentially who could have made that noise.