“They go silent when you come home.

But when Marisol walks in, they run to hug her.

It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for, Alexander.” I did not want to believe her.

But suspicion is a subtle disease.

It starts small, and then it poisons everything you look at.

Chapter 3 — The Subtle Disease

Over the following days, I began to reexamine things I had once considered normal, and this, I have come to understand, is exactly how suspicion works its poison: it does not invent new evidence, it simply recolors the evidence already there.

Marisol knew exactly how Sofia liked her breakfast.