On a sweltering July 4, 1961, Kya dresses in her peach chiffon and waits barefoot at the lagoon for Tate, listening for his boat while reading the books he gave her. Hours drag into dusk; hunger briefly forces her home before she returns to her post. With no sign of Tate, she slips into the lagoon to cool herself, then dries in the moonlight and goes inside.

The next day, and the next, Kya keeps vigil as oppressive heat and mosquitoes press in. Hope fades to numbness. She watches fireflies and recalls Jodie’s lessons about their species-specific flash codes. She notices a female change signals to lure a male of another species, then kill and eat him.

This observation leads Kya to accept a harsher view of life: the females get what they need by altering signals; morality doesn’t govern survival. As she frames it, “Biology sees right and wrong as the same color in different light.” Her disappointment with Tate is absorbed into this understanding of nature’s indifferent logic.

Finally, after days of silence, Kya returns to the lagoon once more. At noon she collapses into grief, screaming Tate’s name into the marsh. She feels a familiar undertow—a tide of abandonment—pulling at her, recognizing that he has not come and may never come.