In the summer of 1994, Azzad crowded the family into their Buick Skylark and drove east to visit relatives, first in Louisiana and then in Columbia, S.C. He billed the trip as a holiday. But the weeks turned into months, and Azzad showed no interest in returning home. He found a welding job and declared the family was staying put in Columbia.

Around then, his behavior seemed to change, Tamela said: more beer and cigarettes, less religion. He still doted on his daughters, however. Some nights, Tamela woke up and found him missing from the bed. She would peek into the hall and see Azzad in the girls’ room, kneeling on the floor.

Once, she mentioned this behavior to a relative in Seattle. “‘Are you sure he’s not messing with them girls?’” Tamela recalled being asked

“And I said, ‘No way.’ ”

‘It Was Rape’

The Underwoods lived in a lime green house on Great North Road. Its three bedrooms ran along a hall on the first floor, one each for the boys, the girls and the grownups. Quanitta was 10, her older sister 12. Azzad had begun groping Hazzauna months before in Seattle. Now, even as his daughters slept side by side in a queen-size bed, he was more aggressive yet.

“I remember the first time ever; he held me down,” Hazzauna said. “It was rape. There’s no other word for it. Every time after that, it seemed he purposely did it in the room with my sister, because he knew that if I moved or screamed, she was right there and it would wake her up.”

But Quanitta heard everything. For a while, she feigned sleep. Then she feigned becoming wakeful, each time fidgeting more and more until Azzad finally entered the bedroom only to fetch Hazzauna and leave.

Tamela had begun working a night shift at McDonald’s. Azzad could be more brazen.

Fearing for her sister, Quanitta schemed. How can I stop this, she wondered. “When Hazzauna would get dragged out of the room, I’d get up, go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, make noise, knock on doors, ask where’s she’s at,” she said. “He’d make her tell me, ‘Go to sleep. Everything’s O.K.’ ”