On Christmas morning, my nine-year-old tore open the gift from my father-in-law and screamed before the lid even hit the floor.

Six months later, the Boise sun was warm and dry, smelling of desert sage and freshly cut lawn grass.

We lived in a small, two-story house on a quiet cul-de-sac four miles from the water treatment plant where Mark had been promoted to assistant shift supervisor in May. The house was thirty years old, built with heavy red brick and thick oak window frames that didn't rattle when the wind blew down from the foothills.

There was no drywall repair behind our nightstand.

When we moved in, Mark and I hired a local contractor—a man named David whose family had lived in the neighborhood for forty years—to inspect every wall, every stud, every pipe, and every wiring box in the entire house. We stood beside him with a flashlight as he opened the access panels and tested the insulation.

It was clean. Everything was clean.

It was a Saturday afternoon in late July, and Mark was out in the backyard, helping Lily build a wooden birdhouse out of pine boards he had bought at the local lumber yard. Through the open kitchen window, I could hear the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of his hammer and Lily’s clear, sharp laughter as she held the tape measure for him.

I stood at the kitchen counter, cutting fresh strawberries into a glass bowl for lunch.

On the refrigerator behind me, secured by a bright yellow magnet, was a drawing Lily had made at summer camp that week. It showed three figures standing under a huge green tree—a tall man with a blue baseball cap, a woman with yellow hair, and a small girl holding a brown dog on a red leash.

There was no fourth figure.

My phone chimed on the counter. It was a text message from Detective Vance back in Oregon—a short, formal update he sent us on the first of every month as part of the state victim monitoring program.

G. Vance remains incarcerated at Eastern Oregon Correctional Facility. No security incidents reported. Health status stable. Next review: August 1.

I read the message once, deleted it from my call log, and set the phone face down on the granite counter.

I picked up the bowl of strawberries and walked out onto the back porch.

The sun hit my face, warm and intense, burning away the last cold memories of that dark house in the Cascade woods. Out on the grass, Mark was kneeling beside Lily, holding her hands around the handle of a small steel hand plane as they smoothed the rough edge of a cedar board.

"Hold it level, bug," Mark said softly, his voice patient and warm. "Don't push too hard. Just let the tool do the work."

Lily pulled the plane across the wood. A long, thin curl of cedar fell onto the bright green grass, smelling sweet and clean in the afternoon heat.

She looked up, caught my eye, and waved her small, cedar-dusted hand.