She starts to write STOP IT ALL OF YOU in all caps in a comment bubble and then stops herself. Deletes it. She cannot get involved in this fray. She must stay above it. Instead she posts a link to the dinner schedule for Mike, Peter, and Ned, asking that if anyone else wants to volunteer, they should sign up, and to please read what others on consecutive nights are bringing so the guys don’t get fajitas or spaghetti three nights in a row. Like they would care. But she still says it, because the idea of it done wrong bothers her. She doesn’t say anything regarding Danielle, Ned, or her daughter. She does say that there may be a separate dinner list once Gordon Frimpong, Ned’s father, arrives from London. She’ll find out where he’s staying. She doesn’t think it’s likely he’ll stay with Mike and Peter; surely by then the police will let Ned return to his mother’s house.

Iris pours herself a large mug of coffee. She answers the emails and texts she’s gotten, in order, systematically. She writes some empty, reassuring phrases, using them again and again, cutting and pasting, being careful though to always have the recipient’s name right.

When she’s done, she listens to the silence in the house, and then there’s a knock at the front door. She peers through the peephole. It’s Mike Horvath. She knew she would have to see him, but she didn’t expect it this soon. And why wouldn’t he call first? Because they’re grieving and shaken and not thinking straight, she tells herself.

She pulls her terry-cloth robe tight around her, reties the belt to keep it snug, and opens the door.

“Mike. Come in. I am so, so sorry.”

They hug. She can feel Mike trembling a little. He steps back from her.

“Thank you,” he says. “Ned is sleeping, finally. He did not sleep all night. I could hear him pacing the floor, watching television. Finally he slept. I cannot stay long, I want to be there whenever he wakes up.”

“Let me get you some coffee.”

He follows her into the kitchen and sits at the granite island when she gestures toward a barstool there. Mike’s a big man, six three, broad shouldered, built like a rugby player, not conventionally handsome—not like Kyle—but with an appealing face. His accent—he grew up in Slovakia, and then his family moved to Canada when he was a teenager—is one she has always found charming. He arrived in Austin two years ago as an investor in start-up technology companies, a recent widower, bought a house in the neighborhood because he liked the greenbelt and the quiet and the high school for his son, Peter, who Iris considers an antisocial oddball but a basically good kid.