The chapter opens in a cheap motel room, where a boy shares an awkward, tender sexual encounter with Tom, a recently returned Iraq veteran missing one ear. When the boy shifts to Tom's hearing side after realizing his mistake, Tom asks him to keep speaking into the ruined side because he prefers the sound of the boy's voice there. Afterward they dress quietly, talk about Tom's missing ear and the paperback in the boy's pocket, and agree to go get pizza, leaving the moment suspended between intimacy, loneliness, and war damage.

The narrative then moves to late winter 2010. Hai has managed to avoid his mother because she works in another town, but while buying Pedialyte for Grazina's upset stomach he suddenly sees her in a CVS near closing time. Hai hides in the next aisle, listens to her breathing and the movement of her earrings through the shelf, and then rushes out without speaking, showing how completely shame and secrecy still govern him. At 16 Hubbard, Grazina's dementia worsens into scrambled fragments of old conversations and sudden bursts of tears, so Hai's role as her caretaker becomes more unsettling and emotionally demanding.

HomeMarket remains the one steady structure in Hai's life. Business slows during New Year's dieting season, then returns to normal by March, with the usual lunch rushes and refilled trays. During a nor'easter, the staff are trapped inside after dinner with only candles, a withdrawing customer named Cherry, Wayne's flask, and Maureen's scratchy singing to get them through the night, a brief example of the makeshift solidarity that holds the place together.

That routine is broken when regional manager Mitch Vogel arrives in a foul mood and turns the restaurant into a public interrogation. Vogel berates Wayne, mocks BJ by repeatedly calling her Cheryl, complains about a missing pizza promotion, lectures the staff about a new McDonald's and falling sales, insults BJ's cornbread, treats Sony's explanation as stupidity, and throws Sony's origami penguins into the trash. After calling BJ into the office, Vogel drops the performance and reveals the real purpose of the visit: because of the recession, BJ will have to fire at least one worker, maybe two, and Vogel even suggests that she blame headquarters so morale stays intact.

Shaken, Hai hides in the walk-in refrigerator, where Maureen unexpectedly confides a deeper fear. Maureen says she has felt a lump in her breast for months and believes it may be cancer because the disease runs in her family. Russia interrupts them for a child's birthday booking, and the staff immediately put on smiles, carry out a cake, and sing to a six-year-old while a television report mentions suicide bombings in Iraq. The family celebrates, the workers return to their stations, Maureen watches from the back, and the chapter closes on a world where economic precarity, illness, private grief, and ordinary joy all continue at once as winter finally ends.