Back at 16 Hubbard, Hai returns to a house made uncanny by Grazina’s absence. Numb, relapsing, and down to a quarter bottle of Dilaudid, Hai drifts through her room, where her scattered possessions make the emptiness feel worse, then takes another pill and falls asleep on her floor. The next afternoon a hospital van drops Grazina home. She is weaker, thinner, frightened by the darkness of the hospital, and immediately clings to her owl figurines; while feeding her cornbread and tea, Hai sees how badly her memory and orientation have slipped.

To calm her, Hai puts on the old Easter 1989 VHS tape, and the video briefly restores names, faces, and the brighter past life of the house. The moment breaks when Lucas arrives with Tonya, a counselor, intending to remove Grazina because Lucas says the house is unsafe and he has guardianship and power of attorney. Grazina panics and hides behind the kitchen table, begging for help, so Hai tries to defend her by insisting she does not want to leave and by leaning into her wartime delusions, presenting himself as "Sergeant Pepper" and inventing legal protections to block Lucas’s plan. When Grazina says Lucas calls her filthy and Lucas accuses Hai of manipulating her, Tonya begins to doubt the situation.

Hai then turns the confrontation into a game Grazina can win. He slips her owl-shaped salt and pepper shakers and prompts her to act; Grazina hurls them, throws sugar, curses Lucas and Tonya as invaders, and drives them out while Hai joins her with finger-gun "shots." After locking the door, Hai helps her settle down with more owl figurines. In the quieter aftermath, Grazina shows Hai a jar of stones taken from Jonas’s body and links them to her memories of war, dead horses, and burial, blending grief, history, and confusion. When Hai gently asks whether some of her stories are invented, Grazina avoids the question, and the scene ends with her fixing on the exact time of Lucas’s birth.

Spring arrives, and two more weeks pass without Lucas returning, but Grazina’s condition keeps deteriorating. She loses a tooth, her sundowning worsens, and she pulls Hai away from work with false emergencies, such as an imagined flood. At HomeMarket, there is one brief relief when Maureen’s breast lump proves to be a cyst rather than cancer. That relief ends when Mr. Vogel returns, publicly humiliates BJ for delaying a staffing cut, and forces her to finally fire Sony, supposedly over his origami penguins and lack of discipline.

The firing devastates the crew. Wayne, Russia, and Maureen try to imagine ways to share shifts and protect Sony, but Sony bolts from the store before anything can be resolved. Delayed by a rush of customers, Hai calls Aunt Kim while chasing him and learns the deeper family lie: for years she has been sending Sony letters pretending to be his dead father, inventing a future in Vermont for him to hold onto. Realizing Sony is likely following the train tracks north, Hai finds him walking along the rails and begs him to stop. In desperation, Hai tells Sony the truth that his father is dead and the letters were fake, only for Sony to punch him and reveal that he already knows.