With Isabelle gone to Paris, Vianne keeps herself busy at home in Carriveau until Captain Beck arrives with fish he claims he caught himself. Although taking food from a German feels shameful, Beck insists there is “no dishonor” in accepting it, and Vianne cooks an unusually good supper for Beck, herself, and Sophie.

At dinner, Beck sits in Antoine’s chair and becomes unexpectedly conversational with Sophie, who laughs and reminisces about her father. Vianne feels Isabelle’s warning—stay away from Beck—but also notices how Isabelle’s absence has lowered the tension in the house and made Beck’s presence feel more normal, raising unsettling questions about what compromises hunger and loneliness might bring.

In Paris, Isabelle arrives at the Gare de Lyon and is shocked by the city’s oppression: barricades, swastikas, German time, and empty cafés. She reaches her father’s bookshop and finds it ransacked and stripped of forbidden authors, then goes to the family apartment, where she waits until her father returns.

Isabelle confronts her father and refuses to be sent back to Carriveau, insisting Paris is her home. He admits the Nazis destroyed his stock and that he now works for the German high command at the Hôtel de Crillon; Isabelle calls him a coward, then secures a tense agreement to stay under strict rules, including curfew and finding a job.

The next morning, Isabelle prepares for her resistance task, hiding an envelope in her handbag’s lining. At an arranged rendezvous near the Comédie Française, she meets an older woman who makes Isabelle deliver the envelope discreetly in a café, warns her about les collabos and the Gestapo, and tells her to trust no one—“not even your father.” The woman sets a second meeting for the next day, and Isabelle leaves elated that she has successfully completed her first courier delivery in Paris.