“But I know enough to tell you that this isn’t normal cleaning.”
I called the police.
While we waited, Clare carefully explained what had caught her attention.
She had noticed tiny differences in the grout, faint discoloration around several seams, and places where the surface had been aggressively treated over and over again.
The bleach hadn’t simply cleaned the bathroom.
It had damaged portions of the material beneath it.
“Someone wasn’t just cleaning,” Clare said quietly. “They were trying to erase something.”
I thought about the last five years.
Every morning.
Every evening.
Every night.
The brush.
The bleach.
The locked bathroom door.
The way Ethan always insisted I leave him alone while he cleaned.
Suddenly, memories I had never considered important began returning.
The first year of our marriage, I had once asked why he cleaned so obsessively.
He had laughed and told me he simply hated germs.
