“Ignore him,” said Katie Montrose, thumbing the screen of her own phone as she strolled into the kitchen. “He’s crazy.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Archie. “What do you think he’s doing in his garage at three in the morning?”

“I hope he’s building a time machine,” Katie said, “that sends you to another dimension.”

“Lame-O,” Archie said. “A good insult would be building a time machine to send me to another time. But dimension? Makes no sense.”

Sandra’s daughter, four years older than Archie, managed to take a mug from the cupboard, fill it with coffee, and add a pack of sweetener, all without taking her eyes off her phone.

“You’ll care when he grabs you one night and takes you in there and starts torturing you,” Archie said. “Then, once you’re dead, he’ll start cutting you up into little—”

“Enough!” Sandra shouted at her son.

He glanced at her for only a second, then spooned some cereal into his mouth. Chewing, he said, “I’m just trying to save her life, is all.”

“You binge-watch too many TV shows about serial killers,” Sandra said. “I forbid it.”

That brought snickers from both of her children. Sandra knew it was an empty threat the moment she’d uttered the words. As if you could control anything your kids watched these days.

Katie said, “Just because someone is up in the middle of the night doesn’t make him a murderer.”

Her brother shrugged. “What else would it be? I bet he prowls the neighborhood around midnight, then takes his victim back to the garage. I saw him sitting on his porch this morning, havin’ a cig. It’s like with some people, they have a smoke after sex, but this guy, he has one after he’s killed somebody.”

Sandra put down her coffee and stared at Archie contemptuously. “What is wrong with you?”

Archie looked her way, puzzled. “Huh?”

“Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“I got this one,” Katie said, raising a hand to her mom. “He’s mentally unstable. Maybe you dropped him on the head when he was little?”

Sandra scowled.

Katie shrugged. “It’s just a theory. He could be possessed.”

Archie said, “I can’t help it if you’re blind to the truth.”

Katie broke off a banana from a bunch in a ceramic bowl and, leaning up against the counter, started to peel it. Her mother had to move around her to get to the sink to rinse out her cup.

“Could you get a little more in the way?” Sandra asked.

Katie tossed the peel into the sink. “I want to book my test. The DMV is open today. I don’t see why—”

Sandra looked visibly pained. “I’m done talking about this.”