Demon is taken into Betsy Woodall’s crowded, smoke-stale parlor, where she studies him like a problem to solve and repeatedly asks what they are going to do with him. She feeds him sandwiches while interrogating him, noting he is the “spitting image” of his father and rejecting the nickname “Copperhead,” which seems tied to bad memories.

Betsy blames much of her son’s trouble on church culture and on his obsession with cars, and she reveals a hard fact Demon never knew: Demon’s father died in July, before Demon was born in the fall. Betsy explains she has lived without a car since 1961 and describes how she has raised and educated eleven girls—informally fostering them without pay—while holding deep contempt for social services. Demon realizes Betsy’s visit to his mother was real, and he spirals on the possibility that Betsy might have taken him if he had been born a girl.

Betsy presses Demon about whether anyone should be contacted, worried about police attention, and Demon gives names of people who need to know he is alive with family. Demon tells his history—his mother’s abusive partner, exploitative foster placements, and losing his money—trying to avoid turning it into a simple “men are evil” story. Betsy’s response centers on Demon’s mother, calling her “that poor girl,” and she criticizes her own son for dying and leaving Demon’s mother alone with a baby.

Betsy suddenly brings in “little brother Dick,” a disabled older man in a wheelchair, and introduces Demon as Damon’s child’s great-nephew. Dick studies Demon closely and, through strained speech, prompts Betsy to bathe Demon and find him shoes. Alone upstairs, Demon fights fear of tubs linked to his long-running “Devil’s Bathtub” association with his father’s death, but he forces himself to soak, overwhelmed by the new knowledge that he has kin, a father’s name, and people who look like him.

Afterward, Demon finds a pile of clothes set out for him and joins Betsy, Dick, and Jane Ellen—one of the girls Betsy raised—for a huge dinner. Betsy tests Demon by asking if he “returns the blessing,” then brusquely announces they do not pray, turning it into a joke that eases the table. That night Demon is put in a large upstairs bed, and Betsy locks the door from the outside; Demon accepts that he has nowhere else to go and wonders what it means that Betsy despises men yet cherishes Dick.