Helen: But that’s where the speculation came from. The bottom line is that if he hadn’t gotten out of there, hadn’t gone to the police, I definitely believe more people would have died before Brady was caught.

Julia: Brady and Lena. Up to this point, they were killing as a team.

Helen: And that brings us to our next questions. Why did Brady approach Michael in the first place?

Julia: Because Lena wasn’t there.

Helen: And what exactly happened to her?

CHAPTER

18

THE NEXT MORNING Michael headed off to work, squeezing into his car jammed next to mine in the garage and driving away with his head ducked as though he could avoid the press. I wished I had somewhere else to go, something else to think about, some escape I could call my “responsibility,” some job to take me out of these four walls. We had hardly spoken to each other since he’d gotten home from work yesterday, instead moving through the house like two wooden dolls. The daddy doll loaded the dishwasher, the mommy doll bathed the baby, and then they sat stiffly on the sofa until it was time to lie in bed.

Not sleep. I thought I might never sleep again.

Now Grace lay on her quilt, kicking her feet in time to my fingers tapping on my coffee mug.

The police had asked me so many questions about Michael, and I had so many of my own. But I was afraid. Not of what the police were implying—I knew Michael, knew him to my bones. He left his email open on his computer, I knew the password to his phone, he called to let me know when he’d be late. I’d never wondered if he was where he said he was; he’d never kept secrets. Until now.

This was Michael, who’d rubbed my back for hours the day after I’d been fired. Who’d never snapped at me or told me to pull it together. Who’d taken a new job and moved all the way across the country for me. And all the little things—how he kept a box of granola bars in his car to hand out to the homeless, how he texted me links to sweet or funny stories, how he didn’t hold a grudge, his anger always gone by the time the sun rose. And he hated true crime—dramas, podcasts, even news stories. While the world was wondering what had happened to the young mother and her two kids or if the roommate knew more than she was saying, Michael would just remark that the whole thing was “so sad” and then turn his attention back to making his immediate life better.