Addie brings the old tabby from Henry’s bookstore home, deciding he belongs with them. Book survives the move from the store to Henry’s Brooklyn apartment, settles among the stacks, and the apartment starts to feel like a shared home for all three.

Curled together on the couch, Addie hears Henry take a Polaroid and briefly hopes his ability to remember her might translate into a photo. When the picture develops, it shows Addie’s hair and clothes but no recognizable face, as if she is turning away. Addie is disappointed even though she expected it.

Henry tries repeatedly, unable to accept the impossibility, but each attempt fails in a different way—blank, overexposed, underexposed, blurred—until the flashes wear Addie down. Henry notices her strain and stops, while Addie stares at the ruined proofs and thinks of Luc’s cruelty and the warning that she does not matter.

Addie reminds herself there are other ways to leave a mark, and that images can lie. Henry then places the camera in Addie’s hands and stands behind her, guiding her fingers over his as she frames a shot of the scattered photos and her own feet.

The Polaroid finally develops successfully when Addie takes it, and the chapter widens into a series of preserved moments: the three of them napping in sunlight; Addie telling Henry stories as he writes them down; their sex and tenderness; and their domestic intimacy as they cook and bake, leaving floury traces like evidence of two people moving through the same space.