When Phoebe opens her door, she finds Matt waiting outside while Gary and the sleeping Juice are still in the room. Gary introduces himself, takes Juice away, and leaves Phoebe alone with Matt. Matt says he came because Phoebe vanished without warning, stopped answering calls, and made him fear she was dead. He explains that he found Harry in the basement and buried him, which jolts Phoebe back into grief and makes her thank him.

Matt says he tracked Phoebe to the Cornwall through charges on their shared bank account. Phoebe refuses to explain the wedding people in any detail and pushes back when Matt acts as if her disappearance was only about him. She tells him her breakdown was larger than his betrayal: she has lived too narrowly and too "contained," convinced there was only one acceptable way to live. Matt admits he was a coward who abandoned her, and Phoebe finally says so plainly, naming the hurt he caused.

As they keep talking, Matt confesses that sleeping with Mia felt like an opportunity to feel alive and to reclaim the possibility of being a father and a good partner. Phoebe explodes at that explanation because she had also felt herself vanishing. Yet after yelling, she recognizes some of what he means, because she now understands the desperate pull of wanting to feel alive again. She tells Matt she no longer truly hates him, but she also warns him not to be jealous of Gary.

Matt then says his life with Mia feels wrong and that leaving Phoebe made him understand what their marriage meant. He says he wants to try again and argues that they could still build a family through adoption, surrogacy, or any other path. Phoebe is moved by the word family, but the vision it gives her is unstable and mixed with recent memories from the wedding weekend. She says she needs to go, yet she stays when Matt pours them drinks.

Sitting together, they slip into old rhythms as Matt mentions her department, shared memories, and the eclipse when he proposed. The familiarity of their marriage begins to reassert itself, even though Phoebe also sees him as altered and estranged by his life with Mia. Matt kisses her, and Phoebe cries. While she hears the wedding continuing outside and senses that real life is waiting on the beach, she also feels the warmth and pull of her old marriage; by the end of the chapter, she is intensely tempted by Matt and sickened by that temptation at the same time.