"Hi, it's R again. I liked the bear. My dad says bears don't really sleep all winter, they just get really tired. Bye."
"Hi, it's R again. Can you read the hen one again? I like the hen one. My mom used to read to me but she lives in Tucson now. That's in Arizona. Bye."
"Hi, it's R again. My dad tried to read me the hen one from the book but he got mad and put it down. He's not mad at me. He's just mad. Bye."
"Hi, it's R again. Do you have a family? You sound like you have a family. Bye."
"Hi, it's R again. I'm sorry I called so many times yesterday. Bye."
And, just the previous Monday, the one that had kept Cass awake for two nights afterward, staring at the masking tape on her bedroom floor:
"Hi, it's R again. My dad eats supper with just me. He doesn't have anybody to eat with. All the other dads at school have somebody. I wish you could come eat with us, because then he'd have somebody to talk to that's a grown-up. You don't have to. Bye."
Cass sat on the edge of her bed in her robe that Thursday night in late April, with gravy still under her fingernails from the floor of the Wabash Lantern, and thought about a little girl in a yellow raincoat with a homemade haircut, folding napkins into triangles, looking up at her with her mouth a little open.
Cheaper than the answers. That's what she says at the end of the hen one.
"Oh," Cass said aloud, to the empty room. "Oh, no. Oh, honey."
They came back on Saturday.
Cass saw them through the front window before they came in, the brown Citation pulling up to the curb, the yellow raincoat getting out first, and she felt something in her chest do a small, embarrassing turn, like a car turning over on a cold morning. She had spent most of Friday at the library, in the back room with the sock-wrapped microphone, and she had not recorded anything. She had sat with the headphones on, playing R's messages one after another, while Mrs. Sunderman made tea and pretended not to watch her.
"You're quiet today," Mrs. Sunderman had said at last.
"Edith, what do we promise them? The callers. About who we are."