I asked the boys to describe their experience in their own words while I wrote it down.

I didn’t suggest an answer, and I didn’t ask them to repeat the details over and over.

They were seven.

They had already spent more time explaining their sickness than any child should.

That evening Thomas Reed visited the hospital with information obtained from the estate’s ordinary security records.

The hallway cameras, he explained, had been disabled for scheduled maintenance on certain nights.

The timing overlapped several of Eleanor’s handwritten delivery notes.