It all seemed so silly. Katie understood that just because you were a mom you didn’t lose interest, right? She was entitled to move on with her life, have a boyfriend, maybe even find a new husband one day, although Katie hoped that she’d be out of the nest before that happened. Katie was betting her mother was worried she’d see that as some kind of betrayal, like she was cheating on Adam.

Mom needs to give me some credit, Katie thought.

Katie was pretty sure Archie didn’t have a clue what was going on, and she was not going to tell him.

She was about to move away from the window and try crawling back under the covers when a flash of light caught her eye.

It came from the garage across the street. Bruce Clifford’s place. The horizontal line of five small square windows set into the garage door glowed.

“What are you up to?” Katie said under her breath.

Archie, who had woken up enough times in the night to see those garage lights come on, had maintained for some time that Mr. Clifford was up to no good. Cutting up bodies was Archie’s number one theory.

“Okay,” his mother had said one morning, challenging him, “if Mr. Clifford is a serial killer, why aren’t there any reports of missing people? Who are these people he’s supposedly killing and chopping up?”

Archie had not needed long to come up with an answer. “It’s visitors, and the Garrett Island tourism board is keeping it all quiet. If people find out there’s a crazed killer on the island, people will stop coming here for their vacation.”

Her brother was a full-blown conspiracy theorist. Katie wasn’t sure whether to be appalled or impressed.

He added: “The chief is probably in on it. He’s helping to keep it quiet.”

Katie, knowing her mom’s relationship to the island’s top cop, had shot her mom a look, wondering how she’d react.

Her mother managed to stay stone-faced, but said, “Well, I highly doubt that. I’ve met the chief a couple of times and he’d never agree to anything like that.”

Katie had been unable to stop herself. “So, Mom, how do you know him?”

Her mother busied herself looking for something in the refrigerator. “Oh, somewhere, I can’t remember where. Some sort of island function.” When she turned around and closed the fridge door, her face was flushed.

“You okay, Mom?” Katie had asked. “You look all overheated, which is weird, considering you just had your head in the fridge.”

“I’m fine,” her mother had said.

But even if Archie’s theory about the neighbor’s activities seemed farfetched, Katie did wonder what Mr. Clifford was doing in that garage in the middle of the night.