Alice Scott arrives on Little Crescent Island, nervous and excited to meet Margaret Grace Ives, the once-notorious Ives family heiress who vanished from public life two decades earlier. She is welcomed into a bright, plant-filled home by Jodi, a brusque, gray-haired woman who appears to live with or work for Margaret. Alice is awed by the house but notes there are no obvious signs of Margaret’s past life or fame.

Margaret enters from the garden, warm and teasing, and confirms Alice’s identity. They sit to discuss the potential project. Alice outlines how a memoir collaboration would work: months of interviews, research, and shadowing Margaret’s daily life to capture an insider-looking-out perspective, with Alice prioritizing Margaret’s voice and control over the narrative.

Margaret challenges Alice’s approach by asking what would happen if she wants “the whole awful truth” rather than her own version, hinting at a desire for an unvarnished account. Alice reassures her that the book will be told however Margaret wants. Their dynamic is punctuated by Jodi’s comings and goings, delivering lemonade and trading dry banter with Margaret, suggesting a close, possibly long-term relationship.

Alice emphasizes her relative inexperience with book-length biography but her commitment to protecting Margaret’s story. Margaret remains noncommittal, saying she is “shaking a couple other branches” before deciding. The cordial meeting ends when the doorbell rings for Margaret’s two o’clock appointment.

On the threshold stands Hayden Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer formerly known as a music journalist, now famous for a major work on a singer with dementia. His arrival instantly reframes the stakes for Alice, who realizes Margaret is weighing candidates and that Hayden is a formidable rival. After a terse introduction, Alice exits, trying to hold herself together as Margaret assures her she will be in touch.