Alice receives a family group text from her father: Nan is in an ambulance. Alice describes Nan as her greatest supporter who fostered Alice’s creativity from childhood, teaching her arts and crafts and gifting her a first camera in high school. Nan falls in dance class and shatters her hip, leading to an emergency hip replacement at Sunnybrook Hospital. Alice abandons her previous plans and commits to helping with Nan’s recovery because her father is tied up with jury selection, her sister Heather is a busy single-parent lawyer, and the younger twins, Luca and Lavinia, are unreliable.

On the day Nan is discharged, Alice and Heather bring Nan home to her Leaside house. Nan insists on maintaining independence, bristling at help while moving with a walker. Heather must return to court, and Alice promises to be available. Despite Alice’s reassurance, Nan worries that Alice will be stuck caring for her instead of living her life.

Over the next three days Nan becomes even crankier and unusually subdued, especially as the Alaskan cruise she was supposed to take departs without her. A storm that would normally delight Nan leaves her indifferent; she does not even notice the rain. Alice rushes outside in pajamas to save Nan’s beloved peonies, returning with armfuls of soaked blooms, but Nan’s vacant response alarms Alice and convinces her that Nan needs more than routine care—she needs her spirits restored.

While Nan naps, Alice sits by the family photo wall and reminisces. She retrieves a photo album she made after spending two transformative months at a cottage in Barry’s Bay when she was seventeen, a summer that represented freedom, lake life, and creative growth. The album features many images of Nan and the twins, and ends with a decisive photograph of three teenagers in a yellow speedboat—two brothers and a girl—that captured pure emotion and motion.

Alice reflects that the boat photo was the first chapter of her origin story as a photographer, the image she has been chasing ever since. The memories and the images reconnect her to Nan’s happiest place: Barry’s Bay, where Nan used to visit friends John and Joyce every year with Alice and the twins.

Inspired, Alice formulates a plan to alleviate Nan’s depression: a return trip to the lake. She concludes the chapter resolved to take Nan back to Barry’s Bay for fresh air, big skies, and glittering water.