As the first thaw comes, Saint realizes she remembers almost nothing of the winter except what her camera preserved: flowers and brief signs of returning life. Even spring's beauty cannot reach her. Watching disaster on the news, Saint wonders how God could make room for so much suffering and still care about Patch.

On Patch's birthday, Saint stays home from school and hides in bed, rejecting Norma's attempt to comfort her with ice cream. Later, Saint waits for the bus on Main Street, where Jimmy Walters sits beside her and tries awkwardly to reconnect by asking about her camera and inviting her to see whitetail deer. Saint can barely respond because grief has made other people's easy faith and ordinary worries feel distant and unbearable.

Saint rides with Norma on the bus route and thinks about her grandmother's work, her childhood memories, and the landscape passing outside the window. When Saint says she misses her bees, the comment becomes another way of mourning what has been lost. After changing over at Alice Springs, Saint and Norma share a picnic, and Norma gently asks Saint to talk. Norma admits that she misses Patch too and remembers the moment she truly understood him: seeing Patch quietly clean up after his incapacitated mother. That memory explains why Norma came to love and protect him.

Saint then asks the question driving her grief: whether children can be taken and never found, with no answers. Norma tells her the painful truth that this does happen. Saint reveals her desperate need for meaning and admits she cannot bear the emptiness of it all, while Norma says she still prays as she did after her husband died. Norma encourages Saint to let Jimmy be a friend and to reenter life in small ways, but Saint rejects the idea. Finally, Norma manages to make Saint smile by joking about Patch once trying to match her with the school lunch lady, and she tells Saint to seize every chance to make someone smile or laugh. Saint answers that she will hold on to Patch forever, showing that her grief has become a fixed promise rather than something she is ready to release.