On a clear spring morning, Sammy leaves the gallery and joins Mary Meyer on Main Street for coffee. Their ease with each other is immediate and familiar as they sit with newspapers, sharing quiet company while reading about the widening investigation into Eli Aaron’s crimes.

The reports explain that the FBI, working with police chief Saint Brown, used Joseph Macauley’s interview transcripts to reconstruct Eli Aaron’s movements across seventeen states. Investigators have now recovered the final body in Pearl River County near the Hemmsford Swampland. The discovery offers only limited comfort, but it gives long-waiting families a chance to grieve with certainty.

Mary says justice has finally been served, and Sammy answers with bitterness that it took three decades. Their exchange turns reflective when Mary asks whether he believes in karma. Sammy says he does more each day, suggesting that the recent revelations have made him believe consequences eventually arrive, even if painfully late.

The conversation then shifts from the public aftermath to their private history. When Mary again asks what he would do differently, Sammy says he would tell her father and Franklin’s father to go to hell and leave the Rothko untouched, because he already had something more beautiful with which to build a life. The answer shows that Sammy now values Mary above the old theft and the choices that once shaped him.

By the end of the chapter, the news offers one more notable absence: Grace is not mentioned in any article or official report, implying that her survival remains protected from public scrutiny. Mary notices a film listing, and the chapter closes on a quiet promise of renewal: that night Sammy will take her to the newly reopened Palace 7 to see Cleopatra, he will take her hand, and Mary will let him.