Arthur did not fight and did not speak.

He walked out with his head down, shielded from the rain by the officers, and across the street I could see porch lights coming on, one after another, as the perfect Hollis family gave the neighborhood the only thing it had ever truly withheld from them: a look inside.

I thought about those porch lights for a long time afterward, because they were, in a way, the whole point.

For decades the Hollis family had traded in appearances — had spent money and effort and other women’s silence to make sure that what the neighborhood saw was the Christmas-photo version, the moral principal and his devoted wife and their lovely children in their clean and enviable house.