This was not a family with one villain.

It was a family that had been rotting at the root for so long that its members had sorted themselves into shades of complicity, and I could not afford to trust any of them on the basis of who seemed warmest, because in this house warmth was the most practiced weapon of all.

I crept back to the guest room, lay down beside my sleeping son, and did not close my eyes until the windows went gray.

Chapter 5 — The Will