After picking up sacks of creamed spinach in Thetford, Hai rides back to East Gladness with Grazina, Sony, Maureen, and BJ in long stretches of silence broken by whatever signs Grazina and Sony read aloud. When they reach Grazina's house and the others leave to return Sony to the group home and get to work, Hai finds an official notice on the door: Hartford County Family Services will return at four o'clock the next day to escort Grazina to Hamilton Home. The notice makes the threat of her removal immediate, and Grazina's defeat becomes visible at once.

Rather than fight it that evening, Hai and Grazina spend the remaining hours pretending nothing has changed. They watch reruns of The Office, eat frozen dinners, drink tea, and Hai gives Grazina a bath. The ordinary routines become painfully important because both of them understand, even without saying it directly, that their shared life in the house is almost over.

Unable to sleep in the night before Family Services returns, Hai hears Grazina come into his room and ask him to take her to a diner for coffee. They ride through the empty three a.m. streets on her scooter to the Town Line Diner, where Hai remembers earlier nights there with Noah. Over coffee and cheap food, Grazina moves between sharp jokes and confused fragments of memory, asking about imaginary forms, wondering whether she was a good mother, and shifting from Pope Benedict to her daughter. Hai tries to steady her with humor, but the conversation exposes both Grazina's mental slipping and Hai's own grief.

When the detective from months earlier enters the diner with a partner, the moment grows even stranger, but the real emotional break comes when Grazina notices Hai crying and asks about his mother. Hai cannot fully explain himself, and Grazina comforts him in her own halting way. Before they leave, Grazina asks to call Lina, but she dials her own house instead; no one answers, and she explains the silence by imagining that her daughter is at work as an ESL teacher. Hai does not correct her and simply stays beside her.

Outside at dawn, Hai offers Grazina a saved biscuit and then suddenly thinks the ground is swallowing him. In his dazed state he calls Grazina "Ma," but Grazina points out that the moving yellow mass around his feet is a migration of salamanders crossing the parking lot on "Big Night" to breed. The sight jolts Hai from panic into awe: he marvels at their bravery, kisses Grazina on the forehead, and the two of them stand together watching the animals surge toward the meadow. On the eve of Grazina's removal, the chapter ends with one brief, tender moment of wonder shared between them.