The alert came from a hidden camera I’d installed in the upstairs hallway two weeks earlier.

Only the long and tedious machinery of transcendence, which is never dramatic enough for what it tries to answer, but must answer anyway.

Months later, when the criminal trial finally began, Vanessa entered the courtroom dressed in ivory, gleaming, serene, as if she still believed that aesthetics were synonymous with innocence.

Adrian looked less handsome in his orange prison uniform than he did in my guest room, which, I confess, gave me a kind of grim, unholy relief.

The prosecution outlined all the details.

False confinement.