Throughout the rest of the day, I went back to the online forum over and over, scanning every new piece of evidence, every missing person or found body or anything that popped up there. And they kept discussing Lena. One poster with the screen name TXsally808 swore up and down that Lena must have been the organized one, the dominant one, the one who’d gotten away. I’m just saying I heard that they had a neighbor who kept complaining to the HOA about them, and he turned up dead. Looked like a slip and fall accident, but I betcha that woman was behind it.

I shut the laptop, but the words echoed in my head. The previous homeowner, blood spreading over what was now our bedroom floor, the things Lena had said: Kind of a pain about us bringing our trash bins in on time and leaving work vans in the driveway and pervert. But he wasn’t the pervert; it had been Lena and Brady. The cameras had been there before Michael and I ever moved in. They had been watching that old man, just the same way they must have been watching us. And he’d been alone when they came in that night and attacked, leaving him to bleed out. Had he known what was happening?

Maybe, someday, we would have been next.

I should have known Michael would catch me. I was on my laptop after dinner, and I thought he was asleep. Rahmia’s savory rice and chicken had made our kitchen table feel like a haven.

For once, Grace had cooed happily in her bouncy chair while Michael and I ate together, but I found that the list of things I couldn’t tell him—the library books I’d consulted, the internet forums, the letter from a stranger—were the only things I could think about. And when I asked about his day, he said only, “I’m just working on the project. They moved me to computer stuff. Spent all day staring at a screen.”

Too soon we were finished, he’d rinsed the dishes and loaded the dishwasher, and by the time I’d fed Grace and put her down, Michael was in our bedroom, leaving me alone again.

So I turned back to the internet forums and was soon deeply engrossed in a discussion about couples who kill. A poster speculated that maybe Lena had been the dominant figure and Brady the submissive until he himself snapped and rebelled.

I didn’t hear Michael come into the room, didn’t even notice him behind me, until he leaned over the back of the sofa and flipped my laptop shut. “Why are you looking at that garbage?”

“I was just trying to understand.” I set the laptop aside and stood to face him across the sofa.