She isn’t sure what she’s even looking for. She goes to their cordless phone, perched on its charger and answering machine. She glances through the call log. She doesn’t see Danielle’s number. Or any number she recognizes. She listens to the messages. A dentist office calling about an overdue bill, a couple of telemarketers cut off by the answering machine’s time limit, an aunt Judy calling and urging Steve to please call his mother, a real estate agent calling for Firebird Holdings, asking if this was the right number. Iris recognizes the real estate agent’s name… She’d cold-called their house as well last week, asking if they were interested in selling. It wasn’t uncommon. The influx of corporate relocations to Austin meant it was a seller’s market, and all the new people from California and New England arriving in Austin needed houses.

But who was Firebird Holdings? There is a small built-in desk, with a built-in file cabinet, and she goes through the folders: phone, cable, lawn service, insurance.

There is no mortgage file. They bought this house right near Danielle. That always struck her as too much coincidence to swallow. Now a real estate agent calling here, asking for a different owner?

Do the Butlers not own their own house?

She shakes the thought away. This can’t matter. She searches the desk but finds nothing of interest. No signed confessions. The computer—an older iMac—takes up much of the desk. She tries to access it; it asks for a password. She knows nothing about the Butlers other than they want a child and were denied. And that they’d lost two children. Carrie had mentioned their names. John and Addie. She tries both names, then the two names together. It doesn’t work.

She gives up on the computer and goes into their bedroom. She searches the dressers, the cabinets, the closets. Nothing…until she finds a phone. A cheap plastic phone, like the one found in her and Kyle’s trash.

What? The same cheap burner phone, with its silvery-green plastic edging, that Danielle gave to Kyle? She could visualize the odd shards of green in the bag Ponder had shown them. But why would Danielle give a phone to a pair of rejected parents who she had then mended fences with?

After a moment’s consideration, she checks the call log. Just one number in it. She memorizes the number and puts the phone back where she found it. It is hard for her to leave it; what if it could prove some relationship between the Butlers and Danielle? But if she takes it, they will know someone has been in the house. The phone is here. Carrie is not the only one who can make an anonymous tip.