Demon waits while Betsy Woodall decides what to do with him, determined not to hand him back to DSS but equally determined not to raise a boy. She pushes Demon toward spending time with her brother, Dick, and explains Dick’s disability, the brutal bullying he endured, and how their father hid him away in a Knoxville home until Betsy later brought him back.

Demon begins visiting Dick downstairs and discovers a room full of books and a gentle, patient man whose damaged voice Demon learns to understand. As they talk, Demon learns concrete details about his dead father: Dick remembers him as a teenager in this same house, constantly fighting with their religious father and then with Betsy, before leaving at sixteen and disappearing into unknown years. Demon realizes his father was a real person, not a myth, and sees how Betsy’s hatred of boys formed long before her own son.

In the following weeks, Demon does chores and mostly keeps company with Dick, sharing small jokes about Betsy. Demon watches Dick’s ritual: after finishing a book (Shakespeare), Dick copies favorite lines onto a homemade kite to “return the blessing” by flying the words into the sky, a practice Betsy tacitly allows despite her rejection of religious gratitude.

School forces Betsy to act. Alarmed that Demon isn’t enrolled anywhere, she offers him a choice of where to go and reveals she intends to place him with one of the girls she has raised and educated. Demon insists on staying in Virginia and, to his own surprise, asks for Lee County; Betsy searches her contacts and decides to call Winfield, the Lee High coach and a widowed teacher, to arrange a trial placement that will include rules and expectations.

Preparing to leave, Demon visits his father’s grave with Betsy, who weeds the neglected plot and leaves flowers, showing more care than she admits. The night before Jane Ellen drives Demon to meet Winfield, Demon says goodbye to Dick and, urged by the coming storm and his own restless fear, insists they fly the kite together. Demon wheels Dick into the hayfield, launches the kite high into the wind, and places the pulling string in Dick’s hand beneath the last words Dick wrote for Demon—an intimate charge to be hopeful, truthful, and kind—leaving Demon awed by Dick’s hard-won freedom.