When Clio sees the house again, she feels a little sentimental and nostalgic; it feels like a “reunion” of sorts. The house is dated, and she can tell that Alexandra was sleeping in her room. She wonders if this is where her mother died.

Clio looks at her “dreaded closet” and notes that the room is exactly the same as she left it. She hears a squeak but can’t find any mice, though she does find a tattered copy of her mother’s book, with a handwritten note. Part of it is missing, and the spine is falling apart, but Alexandra writes that she hopes this helps Clio to understand. Alexandra annotated the entire copy for her. Suddenly, Clio notices the ceiling fan spinning on its own, and she realizes that she isn’t alone. She leaves, taking the book with her.

In the book, Alexandra’s annotations explain the places where she took “poetic license” and why. The text describes her feelings when she first bought the house, how she hoped it would be a place of peace for her and the girls. The text describes the way she cried that night and how she heard something in the house laughing.

Clio tells Daphne what happened at the house, and Daphne says she can change her mind about it, but Clio doesn’t want to give up. She doesn’t tell her sisters about the book.

Later, James tells Clio that he doesn’t mind that she wants to work on the house. She feels invincible, like no one can tell her no. He does say that he doesn’t want her sisters in the house, that Clio is “less sensitive” than they are.

In the book, Alexandra calls the girls Elle, Dee, and Cici. Her storytelling is sometimes at odds with Clio’s fragmented memories, but Clio wonders if this is what her mother actually remembered. Alexandra writes about how James never felt she was a good enough mother or wife, and her annotation claims that he was a great father to them but horrible to her. She talks about the pressure she was under to make things work in the new house. One day, when she found a peanut buttery mess in the kitchen, she blamed the girls, who said they didn’t do it. Clio told her that it was “probably the thing that lives in [her] closet” (77), though it didn’t have a body yet. Alexandra made the girls clean up, and when she went to take a bath, the water was black and stank of sulfur. Clio remembers the smell of peanut butter, her anxiety, and how Alexandra slapped Daphne, but she cannot remember blaming a strange entity for the mess.

Clio is at the launch of a new skincare line with her friends, Veronica and Hannah. Veronica agrees with Clio that people will love watching her makeover the house, and Clio feels closer to Veronica for giving her the snake charm. Clio recalls her mother’s book, how Alexandra spoke about the ways motherhood changed her and others’ expectations of her. When the plumber came to address the black bathwater, the water was fine. When Clio gets back to her apartment, she keeps reading.

Alexandra writes about settling in and how the girls built a fort in the family room. One night, after they were in bed, Alexandra watched as a blanket draped over the fort was slowly pulled away. Then a black shape began moving toward her. She yelled at the girls to come out, and when Clio appeared at the top of the stairs behind her, Alexandra destroyed the fort. By the time she was done, all three girls were watching, terrified. She told them to go back to their rooms, but Clio refused. She asked why Alexandra did that, and Alexandra explained that she saw something that scared her. Clio forgave her, and they talked more about the thing in her closet. Clio remembers the fort, but she doesn’t remember anything about the closet monster. She assumes Alexandra made it up for the book but wonders how she can be sure.

Reading what Alexandra wrote about James, Clio isn’t surprised he didn’t want the girls to read the book: It makes him look bad. Clio asks Daphne if she thinks James cheated on Alexandra with Amy. Daphne says James and Amy definitely didn’t get together until after the split, and Alexandra just blames everyone but herself.

James met with the exterminator and electrician while Clio was in the city. She can tell by the smell of bleach that he also cleaned. She texts to thank him, and he calls to say the exterminator said there was no evidence of an infestation. While they talk, Clio can feel someone standing behind her, but when she turns, there’s no one there.

Clio spends the afternoon taking before-and-after photos of the house. She doesn’t find the back half of the book. She decides she doesn’t buy the idea that the “demon” originated with her.

That night, Clio orders takeout and drinks vodka. Hours later, she’s awoken by a creaking sound and sees a shadow standing at the sliding glass door. It screams, then she screams, and it runs. She chases it across the deck. It is a boy named Baker, and he apologizes, saying he thought the house was empty. His uncle, Austin, who lives down the street and is Clio’s age, dared him. Austin introduces himself and apologizes.

Clio gives Baker a wet wipe and a bandage. She explains to Baker and Austin that she’s there to fix up the house and sell it. Austin remembers her from when she was a child living there with her mother and sisters. Later, she sleeps in the room that used to be Daphne and Leda’s, unwilling to sleep where her mother died. She hears a whispered voice saying, “Hello hello. It’s so good to see you again” (103), over and over.

Alexandra’s book says the entrance to the attic is inside Clio’s closet. One day, when the girls were with James, she climbed up into the freezing crawlspace and realized, without a doubt, that this is where the evil lived. It laughed again, glad. In her annotation, she says that she fell trying to get out of the attic, and the next day, when James brought the girls back, he assumed she had fallen because she was drunk. She admits that she had been drinking, that she needed the “liquid courage” to enter the attic at all, which she wanted to do in order to make the house safe for the girls. He called his lawyer that same day.

Clio makes a list of everything she wants to buy for the house and calls James for a ride. He and Amy take Clio to lunch, then to several stores. Back at the house, James helps Clio carry everything in, but Amy stays in the car. James says it’s because of all the suffering that happened there.

Later, Austin comes over with a six-pack and some cookies. He recently turned 26, and he’s a geriatric nurse who lives in his mother’s garage. She has MS, and he helps her. Clio tells him about the book she found. He says he doesn’t blame her for not wanting to finish it, as the second half of the text is mostly about her.

They have sex, and he asks about her sketchbook. She sees “Hello” written in bold cursive, something she doesn’t remember drawing. After he leaves, she eats a few cookies and goes to bed.