The thing they had catalogued as his pathology was, underneath, the most ferocious loyalty I had ever heard of.

He had burned down ten chances at a family rather than let his little sister spend one day believing he had chosen someone over her.

And then he told me the last part, and it was the part that undid me.

“When I first moved in here,” he said, not able to look at me, “I had a plan.

The same plan.

I was going to give it a couple of months, let you get comfortable, and then start acting out.