For Christmas, Saint's grandmother gives Saint an old Nikon camera and warns Saint that film is expensive, so every picture must matter. Saint borrows a bird book from the library and spends the snowy weeks photographing birds in the woods. As 1976 begins, Saint watches a street cleaner remove the posters of Patch from Main Street, takes one for herself, and hides it in her closet, showing that the town is starting to move on while Saint is not.

To keep Patch close, Saint buries herself in books about trauma, the amygdala, and forensic science. Saint learns that investigators elsewhere can lift fingerprints from tree bark and leaves, and takes that information to Chief Nix, hoping it might help. Chief Nix's sad reaction tells Saint that the case has stalled and that hope is fading.

At the same time, Ivy withdraws almost completely from public life. Saint hears that Ivy has lost her jobs and that Kim is trying to evict her, and when even food left on the porch goes untouched, Saint realizes how badly Ivy is unraveling. Because Saint wants to help and has little else to offer, Saint empties her piggy bank and slips all her savings through Ivy's door.

Later, during a piano lesson with Mrs. Shaw in a hamlet outside Monta Clare, Saint sees Chief Nix outside his house across the street, carefully clearing snow from around an okame cherry tree. When Saint joins him, Chief Nix explains that the tree will bloom beautifully but never bear fruit, a quiet image of beauty without fulfillment. Chief Nix then admits that he wanted to bring Patch back for Saint and needed Callie Montrose to be safe, and he apologizes directly, revealing both his guilt and his helplessness.

That afternoon, Saint takes the Nikon to the reservoir near the trampled barbed wire and photographs a belted kingfisher. On the walk home, Saint passes the place where the attack happened. The chapter ends with Saint recognizing a change in herself: Saint no longer cries there, suggesting that grief is settling into something harder and more enduring.