While preparing for her next interview, Alice reads detailed press accounts of Ruth Allen’s lavish 1949 wedding at the House of Ives. She notices Ruth’s family-used middle name, “Nicollet,” and connects it to the historic name of the Nevada hotel Lawrence Ives once owned. Suspicious that Margaret had called the property by its current name despite the apparent family significance of “Nicollet,” Alice emails the hotel and resolves to ask Margaret directly.

During Tuesday’s interview on the back lawn, Alice asks Margaret what “Nicollet” signifies. After securing Alice’s promise not to share anything with Hayden, Margaret stops the recorders and explains that Gerald renamed the inn in 1919 because, on his deathbed, Lawrence repeatedly said “Nicollet,” addressing “the one it was all for.” Margaret clarifies that Nicollet was Lawrence’s sister and that the name came to mean the person one would give everything up for; Ruth was given the nickname as a tribute.

Alice connects details about who was present at Lawrence’s death and who had access to his diaries, and she deduces that Ruth was not Gigi’s biological daughter. Margaret confirms that Ruth was the secret child of Gerald and Nina Gill, whose “mystery illness” and prolonged stay in the Alps had been a cover for the pregnancy and birth overseas. Because Gerald would not divorce Rosalind, and to protect Ruth from scandal, Gerald and Nina ended their affair; Nina married another man, and Ruth was raised as Gerald’s niece. Gerald and Nina were only in the same room again at Ruth’s wedding.

Margaret says Ruth never learned the truth. Years later, when Nina developed lung cancer, she persuaded Gerald to tell Ruth, but before they could, Ruth and her husband James Oller died in a plane crash the weekend of Margaret’s sixteenth birthday. Margaret reflects on Ruth’s vibrant personality and on the family’s destructive legacy, saying, “My family is the curse.”

The conversation ends when Margaret leaves for an in-home massage, reinforcing her reclusive routines and insistence that the world has moved on. Alice notes the possibility that the massage therapist could be the anonymous tipster but does not confront Margaret.

The next morning, Alice finds a coffee labeled “Friends?” with a chocolate croissant, suggesting a thaw with Hayden. She visits the local gallery carrying Margaret’s mosaics and studies a large labyrinthine piece. The shopkeeper praises the artist, identified under the alias Irene Mayberry, as someone making art with purpose. Alice buys a small, red-gold spiral mosaic titled “Nicollet,” signed with Margaret’s reversed initials, linking the family secret to Margaret’s art.