Demon questions whether his mother’s overdose was accident or suicide, noting the bitter coincidence of her dying on his birthday. The town treats her as a cautionary tale. Stoner hosts the funeral at Sinking River Baptist, receiving condolences like a widower, while Demon, who carried the real weight at home, stands sidelined. The Peggots retrieve and prepare Demon, keep him close, and try to comfort him.

During the service, Demon resents the congregation’s judging looks and the preacher’s platitudes. At Mrs. Peggot’s urging, Demon views the body and is shocked by his mother’s angry expression. In that moment he realizes her unborn baby is in the casket too, a loss that hits harder than expected and complicates his anger toward her.

Riding alone in a limo to the burial, Demon watches the funeral director’s son flirt with a girl, concluding that the world keeps turning regardless of grief. Stoner buries Mom in Russell County with his kin, severing Demon’s wish to connect her with his father’s grave. Demon feels stranded, imagining he’ll leave “fake graves” behind as he goes.

He broadens the lens to the early days of OxyContin—sold as safe relief for hurt bodies, passed hand to hand—casting his mother as an unknown soldier of a coming war. Afterward, Stoner quickly moves on, while the Peggots scrub the trailer and rent it out, erasing even the pencil marks that showed Demon once stood as tall as his mother. Her life, Demon concludes, leaves no visible trace.