Addie arrives in Le Mans for the first time in more than ten years, entering alone and unnamed by anyone. The city feels simultaneously familiar and alien, and she quickly realizes she has no clear destination, no money for lodging, and no safe way to ask for help without drawing attention.

As the market closes and scraps disappear to quicker scavengers, Addie watches a rider and a stable hand at a tavern inn and notices the bulging satchels left on a horse. Driven by hunger and necessity, she slips into the stable and quietly steals a heavy riding coat, a skin of wine, and a boning knife, moving like a ghost among the stalls.

A dropped bucket gives her away, and the stable hand confronts Addie. She lies that she is looking for her father’s horse, but the stable hand sees through it and gives chase. A bell summons a second man, who blocks the exit; together they seize her, accuse her of thieving, and threaten her with a knife, insisting she must “pay” despite her lack of money.

Desperate, Addie grabs the stolen boning knife and stabs the stable hand in the thigh. The stable hand throws her away, and the second man’s knife slices Addie’s shoulder as she escapes into the square and hides. Moments later, the men’s anger and purpose dissolve as if the incident has slipped from their minds; the stable hand’s injury is gone, and they drift back into the barn.

Addie flees Le Mans, stunned to find her own wound rapidly fades and disappears, with even the blood on her dress vanishing like any mark she leaves behind. Relieved yet horrified by what this implies—life without death but not without pain—she reaches the city’s edge, recalls Estele’s counsel about going “one step at a time,” and chooses a direction: she will go to Paris.