Misty buys a bottle of wine from Green’s, and she and Patch walk up the hill above Monta Clare. Sitting together in the grass, they look out over the town and the dark mountains while meteor showers pass overhead, creating a quiet setting for a difficult conversation.

Misty asks Patch to confirm that, despite how much time has passed and everything that went wrong, they once truly loved each other. Patch reassures Misty that they did. The exchange reopens their old bond, and Patch comforts Misty when she shivers, showing a tenderness that still remains between them.

Misty then asks about Patch’s life, and Patch finally tells her in detail about his years after prison began. He explains how he was shot during a bank robbery, entered prison facing a twelve-year sentence, and survived partly because a powerful guard intervened early. Patch describes the bleak routine of prison life, including suicide watches, blood being cleaned from the floors, crowded bathrooms, industrial laundry work, and the numbing repetition that reduced food and time to mere survival.

Patch also explains how grief shaped those years. In the first years of imprisonment, Patch mourned Grace by reading the books she had loved, but when the lights went out at night, Grace, Saint, and Misty were the people he missed most. When Misty asks whether he painted, Patch admits that he stopped because he had lost his reason to paint after Grace was gone.

Finally, Patch returns to the unresolved mystery of Callie. He says he still cannot picture what happened between Dr. Tooms and Callie, but he knows Saint repeatedly brought search dogs to Thurley State Park and kept returning there. Patch confesses that he both wants and fears going to the park, and Misty answers decisively that they should go together, turning his uncertainty into a plan.