How could anyone be so violent, so vicious? Aimee had destroyed my career; Brady had destroyed lives. There was a time I hadn’t understood the difference, but now the obliteration of a second chance, another day, a future was all too clear. This wasn’t a scar across the growth rings in a tree trunk; it was the whole oak burned twig to root. Families left with nothing but memories. The way I would have been if Brady had killed Michael.

I could imagine Brady as a killer. The easy way he struck up rapport, the way he used a wink to make a moment slightly uncomfortable and then grinned, as if taking pleasure in it. At least, that was the way it seemed now. Back then, the grin had seemed to say, Just joking, everything’s okay.

And I wasn’t grieving just anonymous lives; I was grieving Lena. Every day without that distinctive knock on the door, every hour without her haphazard texts, every minute wondering what had happened to her.

The vibrations from the machines ran through me, reverberating as strongly as my breath. If it was this powerful in my body, it must be too strong for Grace; it might damage her hearing. But she was quiet, arching her back a bit as if trying to discover the source of the sound that filled our home. I picked her up. We’d go to the far side of the house, the nursery.

There I could still hear the noise, but it didn’t buzz through nerve and sinew. I set Grace in her crib under her mobile with its trembling paper stars. She looked surprised, and then her brows drew together. She already knew what the crib meant, and she wasn’t sleepy.

“Just give me a second,” I told her. “I’m trying.”

I ran back out and scooped up her bouncy chair, a roll of paper towels, and the spackle and putty knife I’d set out earlier. She was almost crying when I got back, but once she was settled in her chair with its arch of cheerful stuffed shapes, her world was all right again. I wished I could fix everything that easily. But the hole in the nursery wall next to the light switch was proof. I’d let her down. I hadn’t seen the signs of danger. All I could do now was repair the visible damage.

Tentatively, I spread a little spackle, but it just fell inside the wall. I’d need something to give it support. I tore off a sheet of paper towels, wadded them up, and stuffed them in the cavity. This time the spackling compound stuck to the paper towels, and I spread it out across the edge of the drywall.