She left Katie immersed in the wars to go on a little snoop. Back when she used to babysit, the snooping was the best part of the job. In the past she’d found vibrators and porn magazines (old school!) and stashes of cash and photos of old girlfriends and boyfriends. In one case, she found the photo of an old boyfriend of a dad who was happily married to a mom. She’d found antianxiety meds and baggies of weed and hidden credit cards. Most people, it turned out, were hiding something from the people they love. She’d never done anything with any of her discoveries; she’d held them in a secret place in her mind, coiled like a coral snake, ready to strike.

Alexa headed up the narrow set of stairs that led to the second floor. The painted banister was peeling. It could totally be lead paint, in a house this old, so just in case Alexa didn’t touch it. Her own house had been professionally de-leaded.

Sherri’s room revealed nothing. There was a double bed made up neatly, with a patchwork quilt folded in thirds at the foot of it. There was a dresser and a nightstand, and the nightstand drawer was empty. Who had empty nightstand drawers? The absence of secrets felt like a secret unto itself. The closet was small, the way closets were in these houses, with non-fancy wire shelving, the kind you bought at Home Depot and that left marks in some of your shirts if you weren’t careful. Four pairs of shoes were neatly lined up on one of the shelves. Who, Alexa wondered, had only four pairs of shoes? It looked like the closet of a nun.

One bedroom was empty—like, literally empty, nothing in it, and Alexa thought about how her mother would have turned it into some kind of funky home office with maybe a standing desk and a few succulents from Sage. Well, Sherri was a single mother, a working mother, so no surprise that she hadn’t quite gotten around to interior decorating just yet.