It is a colder thing, somehow, than a plot.

A plot at least takes nerve.

This only took patience.

And it changed how I understood everyone in that house, because it meant there was no single monster to point at.

I had half-expected, somewhere in me, to uncover a villain who’d cut Garrett’s brake line — someone whose evil was so complete and so active that the rest of us could feel clean by comparison.

There was no such person.