Lucy arrives at her parents' house on Clover Street and sits in her rental car for several minutes before going inside. The house looks mostly the same as when Lucy grew up there, aside from new peach paint and landscaping, and the familiar Texas heat immediately adds to Lucy's irritation and dread about being back.

Lucy goes to the door carrying her bag, and her father greets her with an outwardly warm welcome. Inside, Lucy notices how cold and dark the house feels and how little direct eye contact her father gives her. His politeness does not ease the tension; instead, Lucy reads disappointment and distance in him and feels judged as soon as she arrives.

While looking around the living room, Lucy observes new furniture and fixates on a framed photo of herself and Savvy with other women at a wedding. The picture strikes Lucy as deeply inappropriate because Savvy is dead and many people believe Lucy killed her. Lucy decides the photo is exactly the kind of thing her mother would display because her mother likes the attention that comes with retelling the family's worst story.

After Lucy's father tells Lucy that her mother is upstairs, Lucy notices an old heavy lamp and begins imagining in graphic detail how she could kill her father with it. Lucy recognizes these as violent fantasies rather than actions, but she does not try to suppress them because past therapy has taught her that resisting the thoughts only intensifies them. When Lucy's father notices Lucy's strange expression, Lucy blames exhaustion from the flight, then continues imagining the violence before heading upstairs to see her mother.