Kit goes to the third floor of Hope's End, where the house feels even more unstable, and finds Jessie in her room grieving over a spread of Polaroids of Mary. Looking at the photos, Kit is struck by how young and familiar Mary seems, and Jessie insists Mary would never have left without saying goodbye or killed herself. Because Kit fears Mary's fate may be tied to the job they shared, Kit starts asking careful questions about Mary's final days.

At first Jessie repeats what she told the detective, that Mary seemed fine, but then admits that was not completely true. Jessie says Mary had changed in the weeks before her death: Mary stopped joking about Virginia Hope's ghost and became serious whenever the subject came up. Although Jessie does not fully understand why, Jessie now believes something had genuinely frightened Mary.

Kit presses further, asking whether Mary had mentioned strange noises, seeing things, or being scared. Jessie confirms that Mary had sometimes acted afraid, even if Jessie originally treated it as a joke, and says Mary had been spending an unusual amount of time with Lenora. That detail matters to Kit because it supports Lenora's earlier claim that Mary was frightened by something connected to the house and to Virginia.

When Kit asks about Ricardo Mayhew, Jessie does not recognize the name, but she does reveal something more important. One of the Polaroids shows Mary and Lenora at the typewriter in Lenora's room, and Jessie explains that she once walked in on them late at night and secretly took the picture. Mary was upset and made Jessie promise not to tell anyone, which suggests the typing was meant to stay hidden.

Jessie gives Kit a cassette for Lenora and explains that she had first assumed the typing was therapy, but it happened too often and too late at night for that explanation to fit. From this, Kit realizes why Mary knew so much about the Hope family murders: Lenora had been telling Mary her story before she ever began telling it to Kit. A brief shift into Lenora's voice reinforces that point, as Lenora recalls promising to reveal her darkest secrets to Mary alone.