And the more they looked, the worse it got for Christopher, because every single thing he had done to protect himself became a thing that accused him.

Why had he bagged the plates and put them out during a supposed medical emergency, instead of calling for help?

Why were our phones gone?

Why had he told the neighbors’ worth of arriving officers that I was confused, before he could possibly have known what I would say?

Each answer he tried to give opened ten new questions he could not close.

I thought about it a great deal, in the weeks after, and I came to understand that Christopher’s whole plan had been built on one idea, and the idea was control.