She’d spent last night on the Internet doing research. She missed the annual dropping of the mirrored disco ball in front of Lucy’s at midnight, an event Grant attended alone. He’d gone over to the Coxes’ afterward for champagne, returning blurry eyed and horny around two in the morning. Suzanne rebuffed him. She had work to do. There were so many allergies to consider: dust mites, dander, cockroaches, chemicals, pollen, peanuts, ragweed, eggs, soy, wheat, nuts, mold—and those were just the most common ones.

Mold seemed the most likely culprit. Toxic black mold, perhaps, an allergen that was well covered online. An old house like this must be full of mold. That would explain why Adam’s symptoms had come on so soon after they moved to Willard Park. That explained the fuggy, weedy smell that she sometimes caught a whiff of: it wasn’t weed, it was mold.

Suzanne, fortified by her spinach this first morning of the new year, walked through the living room, past the Christmas tree, out the kitchen door, and down to the basement, turning on lights and sniffing for mold as she went. The basement smelled a little suspicious, she thought, tucking her nose into the crawl space and around the water heater. She sniffed her way upstairs, past a snoring Grant and into the bathroom. She studied the sink and the grout between the tiles, then pushed back the shower curtain. The caulk that sealed the border between the wall tile and the shower floor was darker than it ought to have been. She scratched at it and came up with a ridge of dark crud under her fingernail. She stood, her hand trembling. “Grant!”

She plopped herself on his side of the bed where he lay, facedown. She tapped his shoulder until he turned his head sideways and opened his eyes, presenting her dirty fingernail to him the way a cat might drop a dead bird at its owner’s feet. “Mold,” she said. “It’s mold.”

“Mm,” Grant said, turning his face to the pillow again.

“Mold. It’s an allergen.”

“From the bathroom?” he said.

“Yes.”

“It’s probably mildew. Mildew in a bathroom is normal.” He pulled the covers over his head.

She pulled them down. “It’s black mold. Toxic black mold.”

“So let’s sue,” he said.

“Is that all you ever think about?”

He thought for several seconds. “Not all . . .”

“What about Adam’s health?”

“Is it real? Toxic black mold? I mean, didn’t someone just invent it a couple of years ago to scare people?”