The chapter opens with June recalling her long history with Edgar Gilfoyle, from their youthful intimacy in Avallon III and the Lily House to his pattern of passionate but fleeting romances. She remembers his first declaration of love during a summer storm while they installed curtains, and how she accepted his feelings as true yet complicated by his playboy life and her role at the hotel.

In the present, Edgar arrives unannounced at the Avallon after Sebastian Hepp’s arrest. He asks to speak with June later, publicly calling her “June,” which startles staff who usually observe strict formality. Before she can meet him, Pennybacker summons her to his chaotic suite and reveals decisive news: the exchange train is scheduled for midnight the following day, all arrangements finalized thanks in part to Hertha’s marriage to Erich. June presses about Hannelore, but Pennybacker, citing State Department refusals and the Wolfes’ overt Nazi affiliations, says Hannelore cannot remain in the U.S.

Pennybacker shows June documents tying Sabine and Friedrich Wolfe to Nazi circles and rhetoric, undercutting any claim for sympathy. He stresses the urgency and complexity of the exchange, including starving American detainees abroad and spies at risk, arguing that the train must proceed as planned to save the most lives. He adds that Sebastian Hepp will travel with the train as far as Washington in custody. June, devastated, nonetheless arranges for Pennybacker to receive a proper meal.

The news spreads through the hotel as gossip while June handles cascading operational demands: rationing questions from shopkeepers, overnight staffing plans with Griff for the midnight departure, plentiful pre-departure drinks requested by Friedrich Wolfe and Takeo Nishimura, kitchen coordination with Fortéscue, and Swiss mail deadlines. Attempting to find Tucker, she exits a staff elevator into a crisis: Carol, a housemaid, has received a bundled stack of returned letters to her husband, all stamped “RETURN TO SENDER – DECEASED.”

June manages the moment with grim tenderness, arranging leave and escort for Carol, and instructing the maids to return to work as she promises to address the broader grief later. The scene is shadowed by Mr. Francis’s memory and the persistent imagery of water and loss.

Late that night, June meets Edgar in the empty hotel bar; Tucker sits at the far end with documents and a club soda, ostensibly absorbed. Edgar asks after the hotel’s finances, then confesses being publicly shamed in New York for not serving in uniform, reflecting on Sandy’s enlistment and suffering. He hints that Sandy’s condition and the looming end of the crisis have made him reconsider his life and what comes “after all this,” implying a desire for something real with June.

As Edgar takes June’s hand, Tucker abruptly stands and confronts Edgar, insisting on speaking with him immediately. Edgar resists, but Tucker refuses to defer. The tense triangle is laid bare under the bar’s dramatic lighting, and Tucker tells June, “you’ll have him back shortly,” before removing Edgar, leaving June suspended between past and present obligations as the departure train approaches.