“What do you mean, it’s not safe?”

He slid his phone across the table, the screen lit up with photos of something in the basement. I saw a confusing tangle of pipes, strange metal fittings, and a small box with wires attached. I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

“Someone did this on purpose,” he said, his voice flat and cold. “Pack your things.”

Twenty minutes later, we were in his truck, driving away from the house Walter had built with his own two hands, the house I’d lived in for four decades, the only home I’d ever known as an adult. My phone started ringing, a shrill, insistent sound in the tense silence of the truck. Owen glanced at the screen, his jaw tightening.