WHEN ROBIN ARRIVED at her parents’ house, she didn’t see her mother’s car in the driveway or, for that matter, Nicola’s. The only car she did see there was her father’s sensible blue Volvo, which gave her a fresh stab of grief that made her doubly glad to be alone.

No reporters either—probably too busy trailing after poor Dean Conrad. But on her way up the walkway, she heard Mr. Dougherty calling out her name. She sighed. Waited in the driveway as he jogged up to her. A nice man. She shouldn’t be so impatient. “How is your mother holding up?” Mr. Dougherty said.

“Surprisingly well,” said Robin, which made his jaw drop. Of course it did. He had lost his wife a year ago, and still mourned her, every day. That was normal. He was normal. Her mother . . .

“I guess it helps having family around.”

“Yeah, it comes in handy being a few blocks away,” she said. “My dad used to call this neighborhood the Bloom family compound.”

“Actually, I meant that lady. The one with the loud laugh.”

“Nicola,” Robin said. “She’s not family. She’s my mother’s old friend.”

“Your mom introduced her as her foster sister.”

“Oh.”

“Was it the pain pills talking?”

“No,” she said, “that’s accurate.” Robin headed into the house, thinking of her new family: Mom, Eric, Nicola. Of the three of them, she knew Nicola best.

Once she was inside her parents’ home, Robin found herself in her father’s study, standing in front of his glass-enclosed bookcases, her gaze trained on the shelves. All those leather-bound notebooks. What would happen to them all, now that he was gone?

She imagined a bonfire in her parents’ backyard, years and years of his patients’ secrets and fixations and recurring nightmares all gone up in smoke, turned to ash like the Gideon compound, before April escaped, changed her name to Nicola, found herself a foster home and befriended an innocent, slightly older girl named Renee White.

It made so much sense. It made too much sense.

She sat down on his soft leather couch, breathing deeply, the way she sometimes used to do when she was feeling panicky as a kid.

As hard as she tried to calm herself, though, she couldn’t contain her thoughts—images of Nicola Crane flinging open the back door, opening fire on Dad, shooting at Mom when she runs into the room, trying to stop her. Nicola Crane holding a gun to Quentin’s head as he confesses to the crime on tape, the two of them in a park, Nicola so sweet and jovial that nearby children take no notice. That laugh . . . Nicola Crane threatening Mom in her hospital room: Keep quiet or else. Laugh with me, or else. Say you remember nothing, Renee, or I will finish what I started.