“Oh, Travis, I completely forgot! I’m just so exhausted from cleaning up around here. Brooke, sweetheart, I’m sorry. You’ll have to make do with dry toast tonight. I’ll do better tomorrow.”

Brooke, ever the peacemaker, would smile weakly through the pain and say it was fine.

But I caught the way my mother looked at her when Brooke’s back was turned — cold, calculating disdain.

Then there was the nursery camera. I’d installed a good monitor, linked to an app on my phone, so I could check on them from the office.

In the second week, the camera started dropping offline — always between nine and noon, right after I left for work.

“The Wi-Fi in this house is dreadful, dear,” Lorraine would say smoothly when I called. “Or maybe I bumped the plug while vacuuming. You know how clumsy I get trying to keep this place from falling apart.”