The last time she’d seen a phone with one number programmed into it, it had been slid across a teashop table in Saint Petersburg, a woman asking her to do the impossible.

Iris goes upstairs, wondering again if Carrie had maybe just run to the grocery store or to a morning workout. She’s terrified of being caught here. But she goes. Upstairs is an office with a small desk, a computer, and a bookshelf full of computer and business books—Steve’s study. Pictures of two children, one with Steve’s red hair, are carefully framed and cover most of the wall. The next room is a guest bedroom, with pictures of Steve and Carrie and their children. The Butlers are smiling; she hardly recognizes Carrie. Their children are laughing. This was a happy family, once.

The last room is a nursery. It looks as if it is immediately ready for a baby.

She feels a chill inch down her spine. Her palms grow sweaty. The Butlers don’t have a baby yet. They’ve been turned down, and even if Danielle was helping them again, there are no guarantees. When one nation says no, it’s easier for another nation to say no.

But they have a nursery.

She checks the closet. Linens, with the fresh smell of having been laundered. Unopened toys. Stuffed animals with the sales tags still attached. She studies it all for a moment and then she closes the door.

Carrie Butler claimed to be upstairs when she saw the mysterious man go past. So she was either in her husband’s study, the guest room, or…this room. The rocking chair is close to the window. Does Carrie Butler sit here, waiting for a baby, staring out at the night? Was she sitting there when someone went by? Or is she lying?

She hears the rumble of a garage door opening.

Iris runs down the stairs, exits the house, closes the door to the patio, and hurries out to the greenbelt. She walks along the trail to her house, hoping she was unseen by whoever arrived home.

And then she walks back to the Butler house and rings the doorbell.

Carrie Butler answers the door, dressed in workout clothes, hair pulled back into a perfect ponytail.

“Iris.”

“Is there something you want to say to me?”

“You mean other than ‘good morning’?”

“You talked about seeing someone on the street the night Danielle died.”

“And?”

“Do you think it’s Kyle you saw that night?”

“Hard to say. It could have been.”

“It wasn’t him. Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” Her smile is toothpaste-ad perfect, bright, infallible.

“Coming after my family.”

“I’ve done no such thing.”

“Danielle couldn’t get your personal failings past the foreign adoption services and so…you move onto her street?”

“We told you, that’s a coincidence. We wanted a home in Lakehaven and this house became available. What does it matter?”