That morning, Olivia tells Vincent that Monarch liked her chapter about Danny and the cat. Vincent responds with another memory of Danny’s bullying, recalling Danny locking Poppy in the garage and the family’s tendency to praise Danny. Olivia, wary of turning the memoir into petty grievances, explains her usual ghostwriting process—interviewing friends and cross-checking memories—but notes she is barred from doing so here. Vincent urges urgency and offers the advice that writers cannot protect their characters. He then asserts that Olivia has always been a fiction writer, claiming she wrote stories as a child.

Olivia initially denies having written stories and suspects a delusion, but Vincent returns with a box and produces a packet of her childhood writing, including the character Lionel Foolhardy. As she flips through, Olivia recalls co-writing sessions from her youth and realizes her memory had reshaped those experiences. This unsettles her, highlighting the difficulty of separating true memory from misremembered narratives in Vincent’s account.

Exploring the box, Olivia finds mementos from her childhood—bracelet, baby teeth, report cards, drawings, and notes—evidence that Vincent kept tokens of her life. Vincent admits he saw Olivia at a New York conference and noticed she left early; Olivia gives a false explanation. Olivia imagines his loneliness and reinterprets his addictions as attempts to forget being alone rather than solely to cope with childhood trauma.

Vincent, embarrassed by the clutter throughout the property, asks whether Olivia could also help sort through the boxes when she needs a break from writing, suggesting there might be valuable correspondence and annotated manuscripts that Alma would not recognize. Olivia agrees that searching could aid the memoir given her interview restrictions, while reiterating the July deadline and the need to make Vincent sympathetic and vulnerable on the page. Vincent remarks that being likable is unlikely.

Olivia then raises a troubling legal-pad page where a single sentence—“She shouldn’t have gone”—is written repeatedly. Vincent asks to see it, traces the words, and calls himself a fool for thinking the project would be simple. When Olivia presses for context, expecting a link to Poppy and the murders, Vincent instead says it likely refers to a teenage bonfire where he, grounded for ditching class, wanted his girlfriend (Olivia’s mother) to stay with him but failed to ask; she went to the party with Danny and Poppy.

The explanation deflates Olivia’s hope for a consequential scene. She had wanted a lead into a substantive chapter but is left with a memory that reads as adolescent insecurity rather than ominous foreshadowing. The session ends with Olivia feeling trapped by Vincent’s unreliable memories and the constraints of the project, despite small personal breakthroughs between father and daughter.