Not once, in twelve years.

Nobody heard shouting.

There were no marks anybody noticed, no cancelled visits, no sunglasses indoors, none of the things people think they’re looking for.

What there was, was a slow narrowing.

A woman who at twenty-four had four close friends and a book group and a standing lunch with her mother had, by thirty-six, a husband, a daughter, a job, and a mother she saw about every three weeks.

And every single individual step in that narrowing had a reasonable explanation attached to it at the time.