After Edgar Gilfoyle left with Tucker Minnick, June Hudson walked the wakeful fourth floor, sensing tense anticipation about the impending departure. She headed to the Wolfes’ old suite—once also Mr. Francis’s family rooms—and found water seeping under the door. Inside, she encountered a sulfur-and-blood stench, damp walls, and a whispering sound as sweetwater manifested ominously throughout the rooms.

June traced the source to a bathroom where cloudy water had surged up the drain, then into a steaming bedroom that opened onto the balcony with the mountain lion font. She reflected on years of sustaining the Avallon by submerging herself in the Avallon IV, absorbing guests’ worst impulses to amplify their joy, and on how the hotel’s acclaim was inextricable from her work and the water’s influence. She feared that without returning to the Avallon IV soon, the hotel’s seasons and its carefully preserved present would collapse.

As she hovered a hand over the churning font, June questioned whether the sweetwater magnified ideas beyond her control, whether Sandy’s refusal and Mr. Francis’s stewardship had left her alone with a dangerous power, and whether the water had called to tragedies like Lieselotte Berger’s jump. The water seemed to strain toward her, and an inner warning urged her to run.

June then went to room 411 and, for the first time in years, pushed her way inside to speak face-to-face with the long-secluded resident. The room was unexpectedly beautiful and curated, revealing a vibrant, self-contained life. 411, poised and sharp, told June to clean up and challenged June’s assumptions about her isolation and supposed lifelong wait for Mr. Francis.

In their pointed exchange, 411 declared she stayed because she loved living at the Avallon on her own terms, not for Mr. Francis, and accused June of fearing who she would be without the hotel. June, wrestling with whether to risk the Avallon for a single person, kept Hannelore Wolfe’s fate in mind without naming her.

411 dismissed the need for approval, urging June to do what she had already decided and illustrating her philosophy with an anecdote: she transformed the hotel’s once-reviled live snails into a cherished symbol by commissioning glass versions and reframing perception. The snails had not changed; the story had. She told June to act and send up more books.

Abruptly, June found herself back in the hall, the door closed, with only the scent of brandy to mark the encounter. The moment left her resolved and aware that action—both regarding the unstable water and Hannelore’s looming repatriation—could redefine her identity and the hotel’s future.