We'd stopped answering the phone and turned off the machine shortly after Mommy and Daddy's disappearance because we didn't like always answering calls from telemarketers, but we'd since turned the machine back on because Annie had said it was irresponsible not to. What if someone had an emergency and suddenly needed the help of eight little girls? "You'd better do something about that," Rebecca said to Annie. "That little red light looks mad." We still didn't like to actually answer the phone when it rang because we got tired of all the lies we had to tell people: that Daddy was in the bathroom and that Mommy was in France, or vice versa. So we just let the machine catch everything. It was Annie's job to take down the messages, but she didn't usually like doing that because she said no one we were interested in talking to ever called. This was true. The people we most wanted to hear from, Mommy and Daddy—well, we didn't really believe that that was how we'd first hear from them again.
