Chapter 6

By noon the story was on the internet. By two o'clock it was everywhere. It was a guest — some man's wife who'd been standing in the driveway when the coroner's van pulled in — who filmed the part that made it burn. Marilyn, out on the front steps, still in ivory and pearls, telling a neighbor: "It's a tragedy, it's a horrible tragedy, but you have to understand, she'd been very unstable all week—" And Ruth Whitlock walking into frame, with my daughter zipped inside her coat, and saying,...