Finding out who lived in the house was surprisingly easy. Recent real estate transactions provided the name of the resident. Edith Moss, originally from Biddeford, Maine, and apparently unmarried. Jake called her from the bank, introduced himself, and asked if she’d like to open an account locally. She said she’d come in the next day at noon. Jake identified her right away, as she pushed through the bank’s glass doors at half past one: an older, worn-out version of the perfect girl from the beach. As he helped her open an account, he could see the past prettiness in her features, now submerged under puffy, alcoholic skin and sun damage. He studied her as she filled out the paperwork, seeing his future life unfold. How natural it would seem that Jake Richter, the newly arrived bachelor, would court and marry an age-appropriate woman who just happened to have a teenage daughter. The thought of living with the girl from the beach, sleeping down the hall from her, was intoxicating.

He called Edith Moss again that night. She answered the phone, her voice thick and slurred, clearly drunk. He thanked her for opening the account and asked her if she’d have a drink with him sometime. She agreed, but sounded confused, as though that day’s events had already begun to fade in her memory. Jake made a note that in the future, any plans he made with Edith would need to be made early in the day.

They were married the following summer, and Edith and Alice moved into Jake’s condo near the beach.

It was part bliss and part torture. Alice, more perfect than he had ever imagined, paraded sleepily through the condo in too-small pajamas and, during the summer, still-damp bathing suits. And as Edith became more and more addled from the alcohol, and from the pills that Jake persuaded her to take, Alice and he began to form a silent partnership, a family unit stronger than anything he’d felt before. It wasn’t just lust anymore, it was love. And Jake now knew that his original plan, to seduce Alice while still married to Edith, was not enough. He wanted more than a cheap affair with his wife’s daughter. He wanted to be together with her, in their own place, without Edith. Jake also knew that Alice did not love her own mother. Her disinterest more than anything else showed that to him. It reminded Jake of his own childhood, his own worthless parents, and how he’d felt nothing for them, then or now.

Jake decided that Edith, half dead already, needed to die, and he wasn’t willing to wait for nature to take its own course.