I wasn’t going to shout. I had tried gentle, and gentle got me told to stop looking in my own hallway. So I stood at the top of the stairs at ten forty-five with my phone in my hand, and when Roy came out of his bedroom heading for the bathroom, I lifted it and started recording, out loud, narrating the time and the open door like a nature documentary. “Ten fifty. The homeowner approaches. He will now, as he does every night, leave the door wide open across from where his family walks.”

Roy stopped cold in the hallway. “What in the world are you doing?” I kept the camera up. “You said I could just not look. So instead I’m documenting. Every night, timestamped, so when I explain to the rest of the family exactly what living here is like, nobody can call me dramatic.” His face went from red to something closer to panic. “You’re not putting me on the internet.” I lowered the phone at last and said the thing I’d been holding back for three months. “Then here’s what’s actually going to happen, Roy.”