The basement door was in the back hallway, past the laundry room.

It was heavier than the other doors in the house—dark wood over something that rang dully when Clara accidentally knocked her knuckles against it. A keypad was mounted on the wall beside it, its small red light always glowing.

Clara had never seen anyone go in or out.

She wouldn't have thought about it at all if not for Leo.

It began on a rainy afternoon in the third week. They were playing hide-and-seek, which Leo had invented his own rules for: he hid, Clara found him, and he shrieked with delight every single time as though it were the most astonishing thing that had ever happened.

He hid behind the curtains in the living room. Under the dining table. Inside the pantry with a box of crackers.

Then he ran down the back hallway, and Clara followed, counting loudly—"Eight! Nine! Ten! Ready or not!"—and turned the corner to find him standing perfectly still in front of the basement door.

Not hiding. Just standing there.

"Leo?"

He didn't answer. He was staring at the red light on the keypad.

Clara came closer. "Do you want to hide somewhere else?"

Leo put his small hand flat against the door.

"Mommy's room," he said.

Clara's skin prickled.

"Mommy's room is down there?"

Leo nodded. Then, very seriously, he put his finger to his lips.

"Shh. Secret."

"What kind of secret?"

But Leo had already lost interest. He spun around and ran back up the hallway, shouting, "Find me! Find me!"

Clara stood alone in front of the door for a long moment, listening to the rain against the window and the steady electronic hum of the keypad.

---

She asked Rosa that evening, carefully, while they were peeling potatoes.

"What's in the basement?"

Rosa's knife paused for a fraction of a second. Then it resumed its steady rhythm.

"Storage."

"Leo called it Mommy's room."

The knife stopped completely.

Rosa set it down on the cutting board and wiped her hands on her apron. She looked toward the kitchen door, then back at Clara.

"Mrs. Moretti had it built," she said quietly. "After Leo was born. She was afraid. Always afraid. She knew what this family was." Rosa crossed herself without seeming to notice. "She made Mr. Moretti put in a room. Steel walls. Its own air. Its own phone. She practiced with Leo. Like a game. If anything bad ever happened, she would take him downstairs, and they would close the door, and nobody could get in."

"A safe room."

Rosa nodded.

"Has anyone used it? Since she died?"

"No. Mr. Moretti keeps it locked. Only he knows the code." Rosa picked up the knife again. "And maybe the little one. She taught him. A song, to remember the numbers."

Clara thought about Leo with his hand against the door. Secret.

"Why are you asking?" Rosa said.

"I'm not sure."

Rosa studied her face. Whatever she saw there made her lower her voice even further.

"Elena trusted almost no one," she said. "Not his friends. Not the family. She used to say, Rosa, the danger is never at the gate. It is always at the table."

---

That night, Clara couldn't sleep again.

She went down to the kitchen for water and found the back hallway dark except for that small red light.

She didn't go near it. She stood at the end of the hall and looked at it and thought about a woman who had been so afraid for her son that she had built a steel room beneath her own house.

The danger is never at the gate.

Behind her, a floorboard creaked.

Clara spun around.

Rico stood in the kitchen doorway in a gray T-shirt and sweatpants. She had never seen him in anything but a dress shirt. He looked like a different man—and at the same time, exactly the same.

"You're up," he said.

"So are you."

His gaze moved past her to the hallway. To the red light.

"Rosa told you," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Leo told me first. He called it Mommy's room."

Something moved across Rico's face—grief, sharp and sudden, like a door blown open in the wind.

"She used to sing him a song on the way down," he said. "She made it up. Numbers in it. I told her it was paranoid." He laughed without humor. "I told her nobody would ever dare come into this house."

"Rico—"

"She was right about everything, Clara. Every single thing I told her not to worry about." He turned away. "Go to bed."

"Who did it?" Clara asked quietly. "Do you know?"

He stopped in the doorway.

"The Carusos," he said without turning around. "Everyone knows it was the Carusos. Everyone except the police, who can't prove it."

"And you're sure?"

Now he turned. In the dim light, his face was unreadable.

"Why would you ask me that?"

Clara thought of Nico's smile slipping. Of Leo going rigid in his arms. Of Rosa's voice saying, always at the table.

She had no proof. Only a feeling, and the fear in a three-year-old's body.

"No reason," she said.

Rico looked at her for a long time. Then he walked away, and she heard his footsteps climb the stairs and stop—as they always did now—outside his son's door.

---