Evie arrives home late at night to find her father struggling to cook dinner. She feels guilty for missing dinner and Lyssa's bedtime. She gives him Tatianna's new pain potion, urging him to try it. He takes it immediately, comparing Evie to her mother—a comparison that stings Evie, who pointedly replies that unlike her mother, she is still here. The exchange creates a chill between them.

Over the kitchen table, Evie asks her father whether he had known about her mother's struggles with magic before it was too late. He admits he only recognized the severity of her situation when it was already too late. The question hints at Evie's deeper fears about her own trajectory and her unresolved feelings about her mother's abandonment.

After leaving her father, Evie checks on a peacefully sleeping Lyssa. She then notices light coming from under her father's office door. When she opens it, the room is empty. Feeling as though she is breaking a childhood rule, Evie enters the office and begins looking around. On the desk, she spots a piece of parchment that has clearly been crumpled and uncrumpled many times. She devises a ruse—dropping a hairpin near the desk—to give herself an excuse to look at the document.

The parchment turns out to be a long letter, signed "with love" by the last person Evie expected: her mother, Nura Sage. The discovery fills Evie with horror, as it reveals that her supposedly absent mother has been in contact with her father without Evie's knowledge.