Alex settled herself onto the chilled white-pearled leather of Brooke’s living room furniture, which was obviously intended more for show than for comfort. She glanced toward Brooke, who was occupying an adjacent armchair, before turning her attention to Samir.
“I’ll be honest, Samir,” Alex said. “Brooke and I have been worried about Mandy for a long time now. We’ve seen you behaving in possessive, controlling ways that, frankly, we find concerning. But we’ll try and listen to what you have to say with an open mind.”
Samir nodded. “Thank you. I can understand how it must appear from the outside. And you’re not wrong. I am controlling. But not for the reasons you may think, and it’s very important I explain why Mandy’s absence is so alarming.”
Alex leaned forward on the couch, as if to lean into Samir’s story.
“I am deeply worried about my wife, her state of mind,” he said. “She’s left the house and taken all her medicines with her. All of them.”
“You think she might harm herself?” Alex asked, sitting up straighter, eyes alert.
Samir shook his head grimly. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” he said. “She’s not well … she—” Emotion overtook him. He appeared to squeeze every muscle in his face to gain composure, but a strangled sob escaped nonetheless.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Alex said. “What’s really going on, Samir?”
Samir managed a few ragged breaths, nodding several times in quick succession to indicate his willingness to be forthcoming. “We need to locate your brother-in-law, Ken, and fast,” he said.
“I just saw him,” Alex answered without hesitation. “After the confrontation with Bug Man, he went home to decompress.”
Samir took this in. “Well, that makes me feel a little better,” he said. “But I’m still concerned. I would have approached Ken myself, but—I know what he thinks of me, how his temper is, and I didn’t want to instigate a volatile confrontation, so I came to you instead. Allow me to explain…” Again, he paused, needing to inhale a deep breath, wincing slightly as if in pain.
“Mandy and I … we are—well, we’re not in a good place. I know you’ve suspected something is off between us, and you’re not wrong, but again, it’s not what you think. I’m not an abusive husband. I would never hurt my wife. Never. I love Mandy with all my heart. And for a long time, we were quite happy. We had so much in common—our careers, family goals. Our future was bright and full of hope. But all that was before Asher died.”
“Asher? Who’s Asher?” Alex asked.
“He’s my younger son.” The ache was audible in Samir’s voice. “He died. Drowned in a swimming pool at my brother-in-law’s house when he was just two years old.”
The news struck Alex with the precision of an arrow. She flashed back to the disaster that was Friendsgiving, recalling the white plaster walls of the Kumars’ home—and the cold, impersonal feel of every room, empty of any family photographs. She remembered asking Samir if he had more than one child, and how he became evasive when she dug deeper. Now she knew why.
“I’m so sorry,” said Alex.
“Yes. Thank you,” Samir replied. “We were all in shock, and deeply depressed as you can imagine, but nobody more so than Mandy.” He cleared his throat, as though to clear the way for the words to come.
“Clinically, she was diagnosed with depression. Eventually, with lots of patience, therapy, and antidepressants, she seemed to improve. But she was never quite the same. I had hoped we could resume our lives to the best of our ability, and over time, Mandy appeared to move past the worst of her grief into what I thought was a place of acceptance.
“Naturally, we will forever mourn Asher’s death, but life is for the living, as I have always said to Mandy and Jay. And we did just that—we began to live again, only now as a different family, a family of three, with a hole forever where Asher would have been. We managed like this for many years, but the hope I had envisioned for our future … I could see was just a mirage. Mandy was back, but she wasn’t whole. My heart broke for her daily. It crushed me that I couldn’t fix it, couldn’t ease her pain.
“Ten years after Asher’s passing, I decided to try something new. I planned a couple’s getaway. Our anniversary was coming up. Jay was a teenager and had a trusted family friend to stay with. This trip was for Mandy and me to reconnect and hopefully rebuild.”
“Did it work?” Alex asked.
“I thought so,” Samir said. “By the end of it, she was a different person. Lighter. Full of excitement. She seemed to have rediscovered her life’s purpose. Work inspired her again. Even Jay’s troubles didn’t derail her newfound energy. But … I remained wary. Something didn’t feel—I’m not sure of the word … authentic, I guess. It was like she’d gone from too low to too high far too quickly. I felt as though she was better in some ways, but distant from me in others. It was as if she was on a mission and I wasn’t part of the assignment. Clinically, something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.”
“From what I recall, she was very enthusiastic about moving to Alton Road,” Brooke said.
“Which is why I didn’t fight it,” said Samir. “I wanted her to be happy. And the move to this neighborhood was something she felt quite strongly about—so much so that over time I began to feel extremely uncomfortable with the decision. Why this neighborhood? I kept asking myself. We didn’t have any friends here, it’s farther from our work, and we didn’t need this big house with a grown son who eventually would be back out on his own—or so we hoped. Nothing really made sense. That’s when I started noting her interactions with our new neighbors, trying to decipher her motivations.”
“With Ken in particular, I bet,” said Brooke. “You know about him—that he and Mandy went to high school together?”
If Samir was surprised that Brooke had learned of their shared history, it did not register on his face. “Yes, eventually I figured that out for myself—but after the move. I began asking myself: Did she want to be near Ken or was it simply a coincidence? None of it was adding up for me, which is why I looked into all of you. Each one—neighbor by neighbor, doing my research, compiling notes, inviting you to a get-together—”
“Friendsgiving—it wasn’t Mandy’s idea?”
Samir returned a slight headshake. “No, it was mine, but Mandy was happy to host,” he said. “I learned some things at the dinner, but not enough to form a conclusion. It took time, research, and observation for me to develop a theory that honestly, I wasn’t willing to fully accept—I couldn’t accept it. But I couldn’t sit idle, either. Best I could do was try to keep Mandy under my watchful eye and make sure she was taking her psychiatric medications—not only for her well-being but for the safety of others as well.”
“Safety of others?” Alex repeated. “What does that mean?”
Samir’s face looked so troubled that Alex found herself shifting uneasily in her seat. Brooke, too, looked tense and rigid. From somewhere close by, the gentle ticktock of a clock kept a steady beat that matched the rhythm of Alex’s heart.
“I became convinced that Mandy had brought us here on a mission of sorts—that she wanted to move to Alton Road specifically to be close to your brother-in-law, Alex. She came here for Ken.”
“Why would she do that?” Alex asked.
“I would not normally share Mandy’s history, but these circumstances are indeed extreme.”
“What happened to her?” Brooke asked with compassion.
“Mandy moved to a new town her junior year in high school,” Samir began. “She desperately wanted to fit in, and one boy in particular paid her a good deal of attention.”
“Ken?” Alex asked.
Samir nodded. “She got drunk one night at a party. Didn’t remember saying yes—but she certainly was in no mind to give her consent.”
“The next day, Ken stopped speaking to her. Mandy hadn’t made other friends yet and felt very isolated and alone. There was whispered talk at school—you can imagine what was said. At her lowest point, a kind boy who ran in the same circles as Ken came to her rescue. He was extremely nice. Popular as well. He bought her flowers. Took her to the movies. Soon enough, she thought they were in love. But after they slept together, he stopped talking to her just as Ken did—‘ghosting’ is the term for it these days. Back then, I suppose you’d say he gave her the cold shoulder.”
“How awful for her,” said Alex.
“It gets worse,” Samir said. “Again, there was whispered talk. You can imagine the names they called her. Several boys made inappropriate overtures, expecting things from her. She didn’t understand how the whole school seemed to know intimate details about her relationships.
“She would have remained confused were it not for a shy girl who approached her one day with some disturbing information. As it turned out, her relationships with these two boys were part of an elaborate game—it was all cold and calculating deception from the very start. You see, the boys had started a betting pool, with half the school participating, that they could both have sex with the new girl within a couple of months.
“The other girl showed her the sheet of paper used to track the bets and the money exchanged. It seemed everyone knew about the betting pool … everyone, that is, except Mandy. She was so distraught she thought of killing herself, but decided instead to tell her parents the truth. They were quite conservative, and no surprise, blamed Mandy for the actions of those two boys. The boys got a slap on the wrist, while Mandy had to transfer schools. But she never really recovered, never made any close friends at this new school, never escaped the shadow of what those boys did to her. On some level, I think she blamed herself for letting it happen. Either way, the ordeal followed her long after graduation.”
Alex flashed back on the security camera recording of Ken and Mandy on the Kumars’ back deck. She saw the truth behind that exchange—it wasn’t romantic, it was hostile.
“Why would she want to be close to him?” Alex asked. “For revenge? To torture him with her presence? Make him uncomfortable all the time? Ruin his marriage? Why?”
“I have my theory,” said Samir.
Before he could share, Brooke interrupted, her voice shaking with emotion. “The other boy,” she said, “what was his name?”
“You know his name,” Samir answered in a low tone. “And that anniversary trip I took Mandy on some years ago, the one she left feeling lighter, better, elated … it was a cruise.”