That night, across town, bathed in the cool shadows of his unlit room, Calum Waters is reclined on his bed, aimlessly watching the sky roll by as the evening begins to fade into sunset. In one hand he absently flips an empty white lighter. In the background is the all-too-familiar sound of his grandfather and mother entangled in another alcohol-fueled argument.

Muffled banging. "Daddy, you can't keep doing this, you'll drink yourself into the ground!"

Calum sighs dreamily, as if caught in a picturesque movie moment instead of a moment of unbridled chaos. The lighter in his hand takes another gentle spin through the air before plopping back into his palm. Loud footsteps thunder around in the living room-Nathaniel fueling himself for another rageful attack.

"I don't tell you how to live, don't think you can get off on telling me!"

Janet sobs loudly. "Daddy, please! Stop!"

Calum knows the begging won't work. It hasn't worked since before he was born; he's heard this conversation a thousand times over. Just weeks prior, Dr. Mahoney at the VA clinic told Calum it sounded like his grandfather was an alcoholic.

"Yeah, no shit," Calum had laughed, lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette and blowing through a third of it in one long inhale. Dr. Mahoney had merely watched him smoke with quietly observant eyes. Other therapists before hadn't approved of Calum smoking in office, but Dr. Mahoney was different.

How does that make you feel? How did that impact you as a child? What about now?

Truth be told, Calum was completely blunted to anything emotional. He didn't care that his grandfather drank to excess, didn't care that his mother was so mentally disturbed she couldn't leave the house most days, or that the military discharged him dishonorably after a few questionable incidents from his last deployment. He physically couldn't care about most things.

But nonetheless, he wrinkled his nose against the bitter smoke floating before him and spewed out some shit about his feelings and his perception of his grandfather, blah blah blah. Whatever it took to keep the medication dispensing and suspicion off his back. Dr. Mahoney smiled pleasantly and brought out that lovely little prescription pad; a thing of unending beauty.

But then the doctor's pen had paused ever so slightly. Calum knew that hesitation well; no medication was strong enough to handle the root of his problem, but perhaps enough mood stabilizers would continue to quell his more "unpredictable" symptoms. "I think we'll keep you on the Seroquel for now. Is it helping the mood swings?"

I don't have mood swings, Calum had thought. Dr. Mahoney couldn't know this. Calum had cocked his head a little, pretended to show concern. He drew his eyebrows in, pouted a little bit, tried to appear thoughtful. He knew he was good at it by now, he'd watched plenty of people make the same expression with ease. "It is. Very helpful, Doctor."

The pen carried through writing down another month of a medication that had never passed through Calum's lips. Every pill went straight into his mother's greedy little fingers, but isn't that what good sons do for their mothers?"That's good to hear. We'll be seeing each other again next Tuesday, correct?"

Calum had stood, tried not to grab the prescription too eagerly. "Yes, sir."

As he stepped outside, preparing to head to the pharmacy nearest his grandfather's house, he took a cursory glance at a little black car parked innocuously across the street. The driver's head was bent and his profile obscured by the shadows of the tree he's parked beneath, but Calum doesn't need to look twice to know who it is.

"Hello, Harry," he had laughed to himself under his breath. "Won't you tell Melita hello for me?"

A bottle crashes against a distant wall, momentarily distracting himself from his narcissistic reminiscing. He turns his head towards the door, listening intently to the sound of his mother attempting to stifle her tears. Nathaniel comes tearing up the staircase to finish his drinking in the attic, still a vat of roiling anger and whiskey. Much unlike his mother, Calum isn't bothered by his grandfather's drinking. He quite enjoys it actually; the old bastard would become fully unhinged once he'd had enough Jameson to lube up those tight joints. Calum knows far too many things he wasn't meant to, all thanks to Nathaniel's fat mouth.

Unfortunately for his grandfather, Calum is the last person who should be given anything precious.

« • »

At the same time that Calum is playing witness to his grandfather's rages and his mother's uncontrollable tears, Boo and Harry are huddled at her dining table, their notes once more spread between them as they do their best to piece together their evidence.

"So what do you think is our next move?" Harry asks pensively. "Where do we look now?"

Boo shrugs half-heartedly. "Maybe we'll get lucky and the city will hold an estate sale for Hazel's house. I'd love to go back and look around more thoroughly, I'm sure we'd find something."

"Like what?"

"Damien's personal effects, most importantly," Boo answers, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. "Maybe he had evidence to back up his sister's claim that he and Nana were together."

"Evidence?"

"Yeah, some sort of record. There has to be something concrete out there, I don't think Hazel would just make up something like that."

Harry frowns for a moment. "What, like a journal?"

"Yeah," she replies. Then she pauses, her mind beginning to whir before the lightbulb above her head dings and she scoffs aloud. "Oh my God. Remember all those books we found in Nana's attic?"

Harry nods, clearly confused.

"It just occurred to me that maybe those weren't books. Maybe Nana kept a journal too."

His confusion is replaced by deep intrigue. "Did she like to write?"

Boo shrugs. "Clearly I didn't know Nana as well as I thought. But think about it-if you had a secret relationship, who would you trust enough to tell?"

"Myself," Harry answers slowly, following her lead. "I'd keep a journal and document it for myself."

"Exactly," Boo says, her eyes lighting up eagerly. "Feel like doing a bit of reading?"

A moment passes as Harry stares back at Boo, his eyes jumping from her nose to her eyes to her lips, before he abruptly leans in and plants a kiss on her lips. "Sure," he responds after a second.

Boo sputters for words like a broken engine. "I . . . w-what was that?"

Harry runs his thumb over his bottom lip as a sly smile begins to spread across his face. "Just felt like kissing you."

Fueled by adrenaline and the rush of adoration Harry's kiss has sparked within her, Boo races to collect the box containing Martha's belongings from her attic. To her utter surprise, when she rips open the box and pulls out the stack of worn leather books, she realizes her hunch was right.

They aren't books at all, they're journals. Leather bound and well-worn, filled with page after page of Martha's recognizable handwriting. Even better, each book has a different year roughly scribed into the spine.

"Here, you start here," Boo pants, tossing Harry the diary that has 1968 etched into the leather. She grabs the 1969 diary and flips it open to the first entry, from January 3rd of that year. "Tell me when you see anything that could relate to Damien at all."

"You got it," Harry agrees. He cracks open Martha's diary and settles back into his chair, a look of familiar determination on his face. Boo takes the smallest of moments to admire his expression before she gets to work reading her own journal.

Months of time pass before her eyes. As she reads she's overcome with a strange sense of omnipotence - suddenly she's gone from an outside party to getting a first-person view into her grandmother's life; her hopes, her dreams, her relationship with her family and her friends and Randall. Everything is through the eyes of a young Martha, and for a moment it's almost as if Boo herself is back in the early spring of nineteen-sixty-nine, wide-eyed and fresh faced, ready to take on the world.

Then she turns to March's entries and her heart begins to pound as she realizes what she's just stumbled across.

"Harry," she says urgently. He glances up from Martha's diary, concern written across his face.

"What is it?" he asks, glancing down at the journal in her hands. He sits up a little straighter and asks, "What did you find?"

Boo licks her lips nervously. "Listen to this."

A moment of absolute deathly silence passes.

"Holy shit," Boo whispers in astonishment, finally finding her voice again. She glances up to see Harry's rugged features mirroring her surprise. They're sat on the floor of her living room, surrounded by a few of Martha's weathered leather journals. The last hour had been spent scouring through her writings, looking for any glimpse into the past-any scrap of evidence to corroborate Hazel's claims.

And suddenly, there it was. Scribed in Martha's own familiar chicken-scratch, dated a mere two months before Damien's disappearance, sat the ultimate confession.

"Hazel was right," Harry says in a hollow voice. "Damien and Martha were together."

He isn't named but Boo knows there isn't anyone else it could have been.

"She was supposedly dating my granddad this whole time," Boo murmurs, her nimble fingers flicking back through the tattered pages to previous entries. Randall's name jumps out at her time and time again, only to be quickly replaced by the name Sunflower. "I'd bet you anything that Sunflower is Damien."

"Makes sense to me," Harry muses. "Knowing the time they lived in, she wouldn't want to be caught writing about another man."

"A black man, no less," Boo mutters. "If Randall found out about her and Damien . . ."

She shudders as a violent chill runs through the room. Her hands tighten instinctively around the weathered journal in her grip. Harry 's face turns ashen-white, immediately following her dark train of thought. "You really believe your own grandfather would be capable of that?"

Boo shrugs limply, weighted down by the realization she's forced to confront. "As soon as we talked to Hazel, I knew it."

Harry nods, likely reflecting back on their conversation in Boo's car outside of Hazel's house. "We're getting close, Boo. To an answer. I know we are."

"That's what scares me," she whispers after a moment. Suddenly she can't look him in the eye, afraid of what she might see reflected in his gaze. "The closer we get to that night, the more afraid I am of what I'll find out. It's . . . nobody ever said it would be this hard to lose someone you love. The worst part is, I feel like I don't even know Nana anymore."

"Of course you do," Harry counters gently, placing a hand on Boo's knee for comfort. "You may not have known every piece of her but you know the pieces that matter. You knew her compassion, and her headstrong spirit, and her heart. You knew that she loved you and she wanted to protect you."

A tiny sense of relief rushes through her veins; small, but mighty.

"You're right," she agrees softly. Finally she glances up at him, thankful to see nothing but kindness and adoration reflected back at her. "Thank you, Harry."

He leans in to gently plant a kiss on her full cheek. "Listen, bug, I don't want to keep you up all night. I think you need some rest now anyhow. Can we pick this up tomorrow morning?"

"Yeah, of course," Boo agrees, fighting the urge to yawn. Harry grins at her before coming to his feet and offering her his hand to help her up. She accepts and he yanks her to her feet, causing her to yelp in surprise as she bumps into his chest.

"God, Harry," she simpers, playfully thumping his chest. Her head tilts back in laughter as he plants a flurry of kisses all over her face and squeezes on her hips, causing her to squirm helplessly in his grip.

"What, are you ticklish?" he asks in faux surprise. He pinches her waist again, obviously reveling in the way she squeaks in protest. "Oh, this must be your tickle spot."

"Harry, stop!" Boo hollers, fighting and failing to get away from him. "You're such a brat!"

He tickles her again and narrowly misses getting accidentally socked in the mouth. "Okay, I surrender!" he grins, allowing her to stumble away and catch her breath.

"You suck," she laughs breathlessly. "I'll get you back for that."

"When?" he asks, a crooked grin hanging on his lips.

Boo rolls her lips together in thought. "The city's putting on a fireworks display at the fairgrounds tomorrow; an early sort of Fourth of July thing." She glances away, now acutely aware of his magnetic gaze on her. "I-It might be stupid but I thought we could go?"

She grimaces unsurely, slightly squirming under his unwavering stare. After a tense moment, he breaks into a wide smile and Boo rolls her eyes in relief.

"I'd love to go, Lita," he beams. "What time should I pick you up?"

"I'm working until four, I'll just meet you at the fairgrounds when I finish," Boo offers lightly. Harry nods and leans to kiss her goodbye. One hand trails through her hair to land on the nape of her neck while the other falls to her waist, gently guiding her body to fit snugly against his own.

"Let us be like two falling stars in the day sky," he whispers suddenly, his head tilted mere inches from hers. His eyes search her as she blinks, stunned.

"Did you just quote Hafez?" she asks in quiet awe.

"I did," he grins.

"Fuckin' nerd," she whispers breathily, unable to keep a tiny smile from slipping onto her face.

Harry merely cocks an eyebrow, no doubt goading her. "What are you gonna do about it?"

Boo pauses for a moment. "Let no one know of our sublime beauty," she finishes, leaning up to press her lips to his.

helloooo my lovies, i missed you all yesterday. i'm very sorry about missing night four, i was not feeling too great and needed a brief break so i could have some time alone to recuperate. that being said, i am feeling better and happy to be updating again for night FIVE of spooky week! we are so close to the end, which is crazy!! i've absolutely loved reading all the other stories so far and i can't wait to catch up on my reading.

this was a big update for dandelion! it's been in the works for quite some time, hopefully some big questions have been answered for you (at least partially). but don't worry there's still plenty more to come :) until tomorrow!