That evening, Saint goes up to her attic bedroom, where she has carefully built a web of clippings and theories around the case. After pinning up the poster she found in town, she decides the discovery is important enough to call the police station immediately.

Nix answers the phone. Saint tries to tell him she has found something connected to the man from the store and the poster, but Nix cuts her off. Instead of hearing her out, Nix firmly tells Saint to stop investigating, says the matter is over for her, and urges her to return to being a child after losing so much time already.

Saint tries to insist that Nix does not understand what she has seen, but the call ends before she can explain. His refusal leaves Saint on her own, with no official support for the lead she believes she has uncovered.

Afterward, Saint goes downstairs and searches through the family photo albums. Looking through pictures of her mother, old vacations, and then her own school portraits, Saint studies the careful record of her childhood.

In the album, Saint finds one of her school photographs from a little over a month before the central tragedy she is thinking of. She removes the photo, turns it over, and sees the stamp on the back: Eli Aaron Photography. The discovery confirms that Eli Aaron had access to local schoolchildren and ties him directly to Saint's own world, strengthening her suspicions about him.