The man I’d been hired to care for was Garrett Corbin — quiet, serious, watchful, in a motorized wheelchair.

He was the president of a regional logistics company, and he lived on that estate with his mother, Rosalyn, his younger brother, Douglas, and Douglas’s wife, Gertrude.

It did not take me many shifts to notice that something in that house was wrong.

Douglas intercepted his brother’s phone calls.

Gertrude tracked every visitor who came through the gate.

And when the family spoke about Garrett’s prognosis, about whether he might walk again, they did it in the careful, lowered tones of people discussing an inconvenience they were hoping would resolve itself the disappointing way.

Chapter 5 — Lock the Door