Saint has dinner with her grandmother, Norma, and Jimmy Walters. Norma largely ignores Saint while fussing over Jimmy, serving him extra food and warmly listening as he talks about veterinary school and his work at Culpepper Zoo. Jimmy jokes easily, and Saint tries to play along, but the evening underscores how comfortable Norma is with Jimmy and how sidelined Saint feels in her own home.

After dinner, Saint walks with Jimmy along Main Street and they look in shop windows. Jimmy talks about money, studies, and how things will supposedly get easier with Norma, then gently pushes Saint toward a more conventional future. He suggests that Saint might leave law enforcement, return to school, and eventually stop working once they start a family, revealing expectations that make Saint feel constrained rather than understood.

Jimmy invites Saint to dinner with his mother and reminds her to wear the dress he bought her and not too much makeup. Saint agrees, but her response to Jimmy's declaration of love is notably flat, showing distance beneath the appearance of a respectable courtship. The scene makes clear that Saint is moving through the motions of a relationship that does not match her inner life.

Back in her attic bedroom, Saint returns to the Joseph Macauley case file instead of resting. She studies Eli Aaron and the rosary beads, thinking through all the churches, stores, and priests she has already consulted without finding a lead. She reviews the photographs of the girls, including Misty Meyer and Callie Montrose, and continues trying to map Aaron's movements across many states.

Saint also reconsiders Dr. Marty Tooms's connection to Aaron, suspecting that the crimes were not cleanly organized and that Tooms may have lured some girls while Aaron abducted others. Even after all her work, she still cannot identify several victims or fully untangle what happened. She falls asleep with the file on her chest, as she does every night, showing that the case still dominates her life.