A code word I would text to a number if I needed a car outside in four minutes, which was Larchmere, and which I sent twice in nineteen days, both times unnecessarily, and both times a car came.

He told me not to eat or drink anything in that house that I had not personally prepared, opened or poured, and not to make a thing of it.

He told me to change nothing.

Not a lock, not a routine, not my tone of voice.

And he told me that under no circumstances was I to gather evidence.

“You are going to want to,” he said.

“Everybody wants to.