Over the next several weeks, Hai and Grazina fall into a routine at 16 Hubbard Street. Hai organizes Grazina’s many medications, learns from her records that she has mid-stage frontal lobe dementia, and watches for signs that a missed dose could trigger paranoia, rage, or confusion. He cooks, shops, checks on her by asking who the president is, and learns to recognize when her mind is slipping, whether she is talking to a painting, addressing an empty chair as a visiting girl, or cooking huge amounts of food for Lina, the daughter who never comes. In those moments, Hai steadies her with touch and patience, drawing on what he learned caring for his own grandmother.

The house begins to feel livable to Hai. He reads Slaughterhouse-Five, a copy left behind by Grazina’s dead husband, Jonas, who once tried to translate it into Lithuanian. Hai briefly believes he can endure this suspended life until something changes. That hope turns darker when he finds an old half-full bottle of Dilaudid prescribed to Jonas after surgery and secretly pockets it, revealing that part of him has still been searching for drugs.

That night, a violent storm triggers Grazina’s worst breakdown yet. She screams, stumbles into Hai’s room, and becomes trapped in a wartime delusion in which her brother Kristof is buried in rubble beside an overturned bread van. Hai cannot reason her back by asking simple grounding questions, so he holds her, covers her, and finally sings a Vietnamese song his grandmother once used to calm him. The song gradually brings Grazina back from panic, though not fully: when Hai asks who the president is, Grazina blankly says she is the president and then asks who Hai is. Their exchange ends in exhausted dark humor, strengthening the strange bond between them.

Later, while giving Grazina a bath, Hai admits that he once wanted to be a writer. Grazina mocks and tests him, but she also pushes him toward practical survival when she reveals that their food money is nearly gone. Faced with the dwindling EBT balance, Hai decides he needs work and remembers his estranged cousin Sony, who may still be employed at HomeMarket. The next morning, Hai walks into town, buoyed by Grazina’s hope and carrying the baby carrots she sends with him.

At HomeMarket, Hai reunites with Sony, whose awkward, hyper-formal manner and fixation on military history remain intact. From Sony, Hai learns that Aunt Kim is in jail after she and her boyfriend were charged with arson for trying to burn down the boyfriend’s failing nail salon for insurance money, and that Sony is living at the Meyer’s Center. Sony cannot hire Hai himself, but tells him to return and speak to the manager, BJ, about a job. Afterward, Hai reflects on Sony’s painful childhood and his family’s attempts to protect his dignity. On the way home, Hai notices a newly opened pizza shop and feels an unexpected tenderness toward the town’s small signs of belief. Back at the house, he tells Grazina he has an interview; as they listen to radio news about possible troop withdrawals, both let themselves believe, for one evening, that things might still improve.