The Previous Owner Left a Note Behind the Radiator

I bought a fixer-upper and spent the first winter tearing into it, pulling up carpet, stripping wallpaper, learning the bones of the house. The sale had been quick and a little strange; the previous owner, an older man, had sold below market and moved fast and would not do a walkthrough with us, which the agent waved off as him being private.

In the spring I pulled an old cast-iron radiator off the wall in the hallway to replace it, and taped to the back of it, folded small, yellowed, was a note. Someone had hidden it where only a person doing exactly what I was doing, tearing the house apart, would ever find it.

I unfolded it. The handwriting was shaky, old, pressed hard into the paper. It said: "If you are reading this, you have found my note, and I am glad, because it means you are fixing the house and you will find the rest. Do not sleep in the back bedroom. I am sorry. I could not sell it any other way. Ask the neighbours what happened there. God forgive me for not telling you to your face."