The day before Thanksgiving, HomeMarket is even busier than usual because customers buy prepared side dishes for the holiday as well as everyday meals. In the kitchen, Maureen tells Hai that BJ’s beloved corn bread is really cake mix disguised as bread, then turns the joke into a drunken rant about deception, hunger, and corrupt systems. The staff push through the heat and exhaustion without breaks, and an elderly customer thanks them for keeping lonely people from eating alone, leaving the crew with a brief, surprising sense of pride.

The next day, Hai smells something burning and finds Grazina upset after trying to curl her hair and accidentally scorching part of it. She is lucid enough to answer his usual orientation question, but she is shaken and ashamed, so Hai carefully cuts away the damaged hair and gives her an improvised short haircut. His practical care steadies the situation, even though the result is awkward.

Later, Hai bikes to meet Sony outside the closed HomeMarket and brings him back to Grazina’s house for Thanksgiving dinner because Sony does not want to spend the holiday in his group home alongside residents from the sober-living program upstairs. Grazina welcomes him warmly, serves cabbages, and listens with delight as Sony explains the Civil War origins of Salisbury steak. The meal briefly feels companionable and improvised, with Grazina’s eccentric claims and Sony’s earnest historical facts fitting together.

After dinner, Sony’s mood collapses. Sony reveals that he recently visited his mother in prison and learned that she will not be getting out soon. Grazina responds with blunt, physical comfort, and Hai realizes too late that Sony is right to doubt him because Hai has not reliably helped before. The scene deepens Hai’s guilt about family, obligation, and the limits of his care.

That evening they watch Sony’s favorite film, Gettysburg. Grazina drifts in and out of sleep while Sony recites facts and dialogue, but the movie’s defeat and loss feed Sony’s larger despair about his father, his mother, and the idea that “the South always loses.” Hai tries to pull Sony back with a small joke using a Goldfish cracker, and Sony briefly laughs. After Sony falls asleep, Hai calls his mother and lies that he is doing well in college and working in a medical lab, then comes downstairs to make beds on the floor. In the dark, Sony quietly asks why he feels so terribly sad, and Hai, frozen by guilt and fear, pretends to be asleep.