elda is in the laundry room when it happens. Six years ago, both halves of her duplex were robbed, and she’ll never forget how quickly she’d known that something was wrong. She’d been barely out of the car, Brewster still behind the wheel. Nothing was missing from the front patch of grass; there was nothing to take. And yet, everything was wrong. The grass was wrong, bothered by shoes different than theirs. The door was wrong, the knob rotated in an odd way. Most of all, the air was wrong, half-sucked away by a stranger’s panting, the rest stirred into wasplike agitation.

Staring at the drops of water on the floor, Zelda feels the same direful certainty. Nothing overt is wrong; water gets on floors. Why, then, does she edge around it like a detective around a pool of blood? Because, if she looks closely, the water drops themselves are evidence. They aren’t round beads snug with surface tension. They are slashes, describing a tale of haste—Elisa’s haste. These telltale patterns remain visible to her even after the overhead lights blink out and she is pitched into black.

It is the kind of event that has to be lived with for a minute before it can be believed. Occam is never dark. Even closet lights don’t turn off. An exhausted groan comes from the walls and then silence descends, a true silence bled of white noise, leaving Zelda alone with the drub of her own bodily machinery. No—not entirely alone. Far down a dark hall, she can hear the shrill squeak of the laundry cart with the bad wheel.