With combined help from State, the FBI, and hotel contacts, June Hudson swiftly tracks down Hertha in Queens, where Hertha has been pining for Erich von Limburg-Stirum. Pennybacker reports that the State Department is pleased, as Hertha and Erich intend to marry immediately, smoothing the path for repatriation. In the Glass Room, June notices a memo indicating that Lieselotte Berger is alive and expected to survive but remains unwelcome in the U.S., and she banters with Pennybacker about letters from his estranged wife.

Hertha arrives at the Avallon under heavy escort. Erich meets her in the lobby in his finest, their reunion drawing staff and legation onlookers, while Tucker Minnick, Hugh, and Pony Harris search Hertha’s belongings for devices or contraband. Plans proceed for a brief civil wedding in Constancy under guard, intended to secure Hertha’s legal status before repatriation. June visits 411 for help, but 411, restless and acerbic, imagines lavish wedding details and complains about dullness; June wrestles with her own sense of diminished joy and the recent trauma of Lieselotte’s fall.

On a fine day with daffodils blooming, the wedding convoy travels to town as planned. The couple returns to the hotel for a reception staged beside the children’s playhouse, transformed into a whimsical venue with an orchestra and conversation-sparking games devised by 411. Guests and staff wear handmade masks, a symbolic veil over expression while war continues and Lieselotte convalesces.

Masked, June is approached by Tucker, and she leads him through a secret panel and up narrow stairs into a tiny cupola room lined with drawers of small carved toys. Amid the quiet, Tucker confesses the hidden truth uncovered by his background check: at sixteen, enraged by his father’s death in a mine collapse after crushed union efforts, he set explosives to flood the mine, nearly died, and destroyed both the mine and Casto Springs’s sweetwater. To escape prosecution, community members enabled him to assume the identity of his deceased cousin, Tucker Rye Minnick; the boy Richard Monrow Minnick “died” in service of justice while Tucker lived on under the new name.

Moved, June removes Tucker’s mask and they passionately embrace, beginning to undress as they yield to pent-up desire. Their intimacy halts abruptly when a shift in the music and crowd noise draws their attention to the lawn below. They see Agent Pony Harris confronting and handcuffing Sebastian Hepp in front of onlookers, while Tucker seethes and June watches in shock at the spectacle during the reception.

The charged scene is capped by the arrival of a cream-and-chrome Auburn sports car winding up the drive. June recognizes it instantly: Edgar Gilfoyle has returned to the Avallon, signaling fresh complications just as the wedding and the arrest collide.