Quickly I unsnapped Grace from her carrier and picked her up, letting her nuzzle into my neck. Michael had shoved his balled-up hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. His face looked older and worn, and in the ill-fitting clothes issued by the police, he seemed almost like a stranger playing the part of my husband.

The blood on his hands, the woman … “Was it Lena?”

“What?” He did look at me then, his eyes rimmed with red.

“The woman. Who was it?”

He shook his head. “Not Lena. Younger. And she had brown hair. Like you.”

And then he did step closer, his face crumpling again. Shifting Grace to one side, I pulled Michael close, feeling the dampness of his tears against my neck. He’d been so strong for so long, long before this terrible night. Now he needed me, and I was going to be just as strong for him. We were a team, and we’d get through this together.

The next few days were a nightmare, caught between piercing fear and unrelenting tedium, the grinding certainty that terrible things were on the horizon but all I could do was wait. Wait as the police summoned Michael for another round of questioning, wait as the reporters filled our lawn, wait until the next awful surprise.

The police had gone over our house, every inch of it, and they had found cameras in the security system, hidden in the white boxes that housed the motion sensors. “Why didn’t they interfere with the alarm?” I’d asked the technician who’d carefully dismantled the box.

He shrugged. “Plastic housing was big enough for both. And your system’s hooked into the landline, but these cameras are wireless.”

The tech team searched every corner of our house, and the scanners they used made Brady’s look like a child’s toy. For all I knew, it might have been. We’d invited in the very person who’d installed the cameras, and we’d believed every lie he’d told us. No wonder his special sweeper hadn’t found them. He’d probably rigged it to beep whenever he wanted.

And now our house had holes and gashes, missing pieces removed by the police, and the parts that remained were tainted and untrustworthy.

They’d even dug up the tiered garden Michael and Brady had built. Now the lumber was piled to one side, the plants in a wilted heap beside the mound of loose earth the police had dumped back into the hole. Maybe it did resemble a fresh grave, but at least I knew it was empty.