LAMIAE

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE: ANSWERS

Days passed one by one. Days turned into weeks and before she knew it a month had passed, followed by a second and a third one since her arrival at the residence.

However, these were difficult months. One of the reasons was Alan, who took her words to heart so much that he stopped speaking to her completely. After a few more weeks of avoiding her, two months after their conversation, he found an even better solution - he didn't show up at school at all.

Arleta was another reason. Dagmara had to find justification for her harsh behavior towards her, but whatever she told her - migraine, flu, sleep deprivation - each turned out to be insufficient. Therefore, she took a different tactic, lying and repeating over and over that nothing had happened, that it was just the climate and weather that was depressing her.

While sitting in math class in December, she thought that she had to finally talk honestly to her grandmother. During these few weeks, they practically didn't talk at all, which Genevieve accepted with strange enthusiasm, without even questioning her granddaughter's moodiness. Dagmara still didn't know where her grandmother had gone at the beginning of her arrival and why she had made it a secret. But it was not everything. She decided that not only would she talk to her grandmother, she would also talk to Casper and, finally, also to Arleta.

Everyone would be forced to answer questions. However, the questions couldn't be just any questions - but the same ones, because that's the only way to show who was telling the truth and who was lying. If their versions were approximately the same, then she would be sure that she wasn't deceived by anyone. She was aware that she had to make a decision and that this decision could affect her future. Dagmara decided that if all of them answer her questions differently, she would definitely move out of the residence at the beginning of the new year.

Why didn't she do it earlier? Why didn't she talk to her grandmother immediately after her return? Well, probably she wanted to give her a chance. She couldn't move out after a few days just because she didn't like life in Kielce. She had to try living there, she had to give Genevieve the opportunity to resolve the situation. But her grandmother didn't use it.

Before she carefully wrote down the questions on a piece of paper, she reached for Victoria's diary, hoping that today, December 10, another note would appear. During these months, she couldn't figure out the diary's structure and unfortunately, to her despair, as she expected, not only did the new note not appear, but there was no second one either. Only the first one was visible. So she disconsolately put the diary on the shelf and sat down at the dressing table with a piece of paper and a pen in her hand.

It took her a few minutes to come up with trick questions. With the sheet already written down and hidden in her pants pocket, she first headed to her grandmother. She walked through the unlit corridor, pretending not to feel how loud her heart was pounding. It seemed as if it wanted to warn her to leave the problem, not to investigate it. Her heart may have wanted her well, but it didn't understand her brain, which didn't understand everything and wanted above all to find the truth.

Grandma was busy in the kitchen, where something was obviously burnt. This was evidenced by the unpleasant burning smell that Dagmara felt as soon as her foot crossed the threshold of the room.

"Do you want to eat something?" her grandmother asked, looking sideways at her granddaughter. She asked it in a tone as if eating was a crime and should be punished by the highest levels of justice. "You see, I'm a bit busy," Dagmara wrinkled her nose, taking a quick look around the kitchen to discover the cause of the bad smell. There was a large pot on the stove with something bubbling inside. That had to be it.

"No, I want to talk," she answered truthfully.

"Must be now?" Genevieve grimaced.

"Yes," Dagmara looked at her nails, deliberately avoiding her grandmother's eyes.

"Okay," she agreed. She walked slowly to the burner and turned the gas down so that whatever was cooking in the pot wouldn't burn any more.

Dagmara stared at Genevieve. She no longer looked at her nails, but directly at her grandmother, as if she believed she would know if she wanted to lie.

"Great. First of all, you could tell me about your departure from Kielce," she blurted out without delay.

The woman sighed slightly, as she probably sensed that such a conversation would take place. Her oil-moisturized skin looked unnatural today.

"Then in September?" she asked, but probably only to give herself more time to answer.

The girl nodded.

"I was in Warsaw," she explained briefly, but one glance at her granddaughter's disappointed face was enough for her to continue: "I visited the house where I once lived for one year, a house I hadn't been to for a long time. By the way, I also visited my friend who lives nearby, she is one of the ladies who were in this house."

Dagmara became lost in thought. There was no chance she knew who she was talking about. There were about twenty of them then.

"I see. Can I also ask you a question about Sandra and Victoria?"

Genevieve looked at her as if half in surprise, half in dissatisfaction that it wasn't over yet.

"It depends on what you want to know..."

"Maybe I'm wrong, but their cases seem strangely similar to each other," she wrote this sentence a few minutes ago in the room. Fortunately, she remembered it well enough to recall it from memory.

"There is a certain similarity between them," Grandma muttered casually.

"But they are different," Dagmara interjected. "For example, the fact that Victoria knew she was going to die."

Her grandmother's face expressed many emotions, but none of them resembled pride in what an observant granddaughter she had. After all, discovering such information (the girl immediately knew it was accurate) was equivalent to snooping around the residence.

"Yes, she knew, but I'm much more surprised how do you know about it?"

"And does it matter?" Dagmara replied evasively.

"Yes, because not many people knew about it. Even Casper didn't think that Victoria knew this would happen. I didn't tell you about it, and neither did Sandra. Victoria even more so..."

Her grandmother's eyes widened, guessing something.

"Unless you found her missing diary."

"Not me," Dagmara retorted. "One day it was lying in my room and I couldn't resist and looked inside," she suddenly felt guilty for reading someone else's diary, but her grandmother downplayed the issue of reading other people's property.

"Have you perhaps discovered how to read it?" she asked excitedly, but when the girl shook her head, her enthusiasm diminished. "This is not an ordinary diary, that's all I can tell you."

That much I know too, thought Dagmara. Which normal diary reveals some text after a few moments...

Her brain had become accustomed to the idea that things happened in the residence that she couldn't rationally explain. One day in her room the furniture was arranged in a row along the entire length of the wall, the next day it was scattered in the corners, the third day somewhere near the windows, and on the fourth day it was back to the row. There were situations that the mind couldn't understand, for example the situation in November when, due to her loud complaints about the frost, it became so muggy outside that she had the impression that she was in the middle of summer. Sometimes her legs took her on their own, and then she realized she didn't know where she was. Tie, whom she considered her guide, always appeared then. The cat led her out of the unknown room, constantly heading towards the kitchen.

Is it really magic? she thought then.