I took two cups from the cabinet, dropped in the tea bags, and filled the kettle. The ordinary routine of hospitality was calming. I found it much easier to be a hostess than a guest. Just remembering last night made me flush, and I fiddled with the kettle a little longer than necessary until my face didn’t feel so hot.

“We’re new to the neighborhood. Have you lived here long? Does this kind of thing happen often?”

My questions sounded abrupt, but Rahmia didn’t seem to mind. “My son, Emir, and I have been here almost two years, but Ali has been here longer. We had trouble selling our house in Detroit. This is a nice neighborhood, but you have to be careful. Not just here—everywhere. I thought it might be safer here, but right after we moved, there were home invasions, where people come and”—she slammed a fist into her other hand—“just knock down the door. That’s what I thought when I saw the car smashed into my garage. If a person is home, they get shot. Ali says it’s drugs and it happens closer to the city, inside the ‘loop,’ he says, but strange things have happened here too.”

I was having a little trouble following her. “Like what?”

She leaned forward, tipping Bibi onto the floor. “Twice the police have found cars on the side of the road, the keys still in them, engines running, but the people”—she opened her hands wide—“gone.”

My confusion must have shown on my face, because Rahmia lowered her voice and spoke with exaggerated slowness. “The drivers are missing. When the police go to their homes, they are not there either. They were driving their cars; they pulled over and disappeared. No one knows what happened to them. Empty car, empty house, just gone.”

The kettle squealed. I was suddenly glad it was a bright sunny morning and my front door was locked.

C2C TRANSCRIPT

3

Helen: Let me set the scene. Then we’ll get to the crime. This area of Sugar Land has a large number of planned communities, entire neighborhoods often designed by a single builder with their own schools, playgrounds, swimming pools, grocery stores, and aesthetics. Really manicured landscaping, wide sidewalks, and those little sprinkler parks—

Julia: Splash pads.

Helen: —and these planned communities have stringent homeowners’ associations. They set the rules like whether you can have a basketball hoop or when you need to mow your lawn.

Julia: That seems kind of authoritarian.

Helen: The idea is that one house can bring down the property values for the entire community. And since dues can be as high as a thousand dollars a year, all the residents are invested in making sure everyone follows the rules.

Julia: Okay, even creepier. Like your neighbors are now informants. [whispering] I’d like to report an untrimmed tree.