Beth decides not to confront Leo about stealing Bobby's photograph because she feels partly to blame. Beth believes that, by talking so often about her dead son, she has given Leo another source of sadness when Leo is already struggling with his parents' divorce and separation from his mother. Beth reflects on how differently the adults around her carry grief: Frank buries his in relentless work and silence, while Jimmy works hard too but also leans on drink, though Beth hopes Nina and their coming marriage will steady him.

As Beth prepares to leave, Gabriel asks Beth to stay for wine and speak privately in the library. Beth immediately fears Gabriel is about to ask her to stop looking after Leo, but Gabriel reassures Beth that Leo values those afternoons and is happier because of them. Instead, Gabriel carefully raises a different concern: Leo has become fixated on Bobby and seems to measure himself against the idealized image of Beth's dead son.

The conversation hurts Beth, but Beth admits Gabriel is right. Beth explains that Leo kept asking about Bobby and that she let herself keep talking because almost no one else will mention him. Frank cannot bear those conversations, so Beth has been using Leo's curiosity as a way to keep Bobby present and remembered. When Gabriel says he wishes he had known Bobby and asks what Bobby was like, Beth is deeply moved because Gabriel is offering the one thing Beth has been starved of: a willing listener.

That exchange becomes the start of a new intimacy between Beth and Gabriel. Over repeated early evening glasses of wine, Beth tells Gabriel story after story about Bobby, beginning with his dramatic birth during a storm, and Gabriel listens with real attention. These conversations make Bobby feel vividly alive to Beth again, but they also draw Beth and Gabriel closer in a private way that Beth knows would wound Frank if he discovered she was sharing such precious memories of their son with Gabriel.