Chadworth had never made the connection until much later: that his older daughter had learned, by the age of six, that the adults in her house were temporary.

Rosamund Abara came in the spring of the fifth year, through the same agency that had sent the others.

She was twenty-six.

She had a two-page résumé and a folder of references and a way of standing in a room that made it clear she had been interviewed for jobs before and had not enjoyed it.

She was quiet.

She answered questions in complete sentences and then stopped talking, which unnerved the estate manager conducting the interview and impressed Chadworth, who was used to people filling silence with noise in order to be liked.

He asked her one question personally, on the phone, from a job site in another state, with a pneumatic hammer going somewhere behind him.