On a bright morning after the rain, Tobias drives from River Down to Oath with articles and post, promising to return within hours before the group leaves for Bitteryne the next day. Attie watches him go with visible tension, worrying less about Tobias himself than about what will happen if he does not return. After Attie leaves for a walk, Iris finds Marisol in the garden identifying a bird whose rich song turns out to be a nightingale.

Marisol tells Iris about nightingales once captured for trade and study, explaining that the surviving birds later killed themselves trying to escape their cages because they could not migrate. The story leads Marisol to apologize for how she behaved the previous night. Marisol realizes that trying to keep loved ones close for safety is another kind of captivity, and she chooses to let go of that impulse. To show her care, Marisol gives Iris a small old book about birds and asks Iris to think of her while traveling west. As Iris follows Marisol inside to help prepare welcome baskets for new arrivals in River Down, Iris notices two vultures on a nearby roof and feels a brief omen-like chill.

That night, Roman writes another letter to “Elizabeth,” admitting that he cannot sleep and that, although he knows almost nothing about Elizabeth, he wants to know something about her that no one else does. Iris replies from a laundry room, describing her disheveled state, the bird book at her side, and the bird facts she has learned that day. Iris confesses a new private wish: she wants to become skilled enough to identify birds by song alone. Iris also tells Roman that she is eighteen and asks him to share a fact about himself in return.

Roman does not answer, because he does not know how to confess that he cannot remember his own past. Restless at the abandoned farmhouse, Roman falls asleep and dreams vividly of working at the Oath Gazette before the war. In the dream, Zeb Autry warns Roman that a new female hire will compete with him for the columnist position. Roman watches Iris Winnow arrive, immediately judges her as a threat, then formally meets her for the first time. When Roman takes Iris’s offered hand, the shock of the touch jolts him awake, suggesting that buried memories of Iris and his former life are beginning to break through.