The not-wondering was a discipline, and a hard-won one.

Anyone who has ever hosted family for an extended stay knows that the single most important skill is the skill of the averted eye, the deliberate decision not to notice things, not to comment, not to investigate.

A long houseguest is only survivable if everyone agrees to a certain amount of mutual non-observation, a gentleman’s agreement that we will all pretend not to hear the things we hear through walls and not to wonder about the doors that stay shut.

I had been very good at that agreement.