Demon drives from Murder Valley back into Lee County tense and prickly, remembering a past fight with Angus on this same road. He goes to see Coach Winfield in a surprisingly nice apartment in Norton, struck by how sobriety has given Coach a clean restart while leaving him sad and displaced. Coach happily recounts his football “hootenanny” reunion, and Demon quietly keeps to himself the losses and damage tied to that world.

Demon and Coach avoid their biggest subjects, including U-Haul’s embezzlement case and the deeper ways adults used and overlooked boys like Demon. Still, Demon stays because sobriety gives them a shared code, and he wants to show up and make amends in the only way he can: with presence and restraint.

Demon then goes to the old house, where Angus is packing and sorting to sell it. Their greeting is awkward and charged, but they trade jokes until Demon reads a message confirming Annie’s baby has been born: Woodie Guthrie Amato Armstrong. Inside the cold, utility-less house, Demon and Angus revisit their earliest days together, and Demon pushes into an old wound; Angus explains what it felt like to be the daughter in a house that wanted a son, and how Demon unknowingly made it harder.

As they sort through Coach’s old office, Angus shares her work helping tightly wound kids and her plan to keep studying to become a social worker through a mostly online program based in Kentucky. Demon tests the rumor that Angus “has her cap set” for someone, but she shuts him down with a look, leaving the subject hanging. They move outside to assess the junk pile, settle back into familiar banter, and talk about how Demon brought “Christmas magic” to the house—magic that faded after he left.

Demon admits he kept the ship-in-a-bottle Angus once gave him, and the nostalgia turns into a risky kind of tenderness. Angus offers a new “present”: she wants to take Demon to the Atlantic Ocean, and, with no deadline pulling him back, Demon agrees. They pick up what they need, take the Beretta instead of Demon’s sea-blue car, and head east in winter, flirting and talking about oysters; as the miles pass, Demon realizes Angus is not “his sister” in the way he has tried to believe, and the drive itself feels like the safest, best part of his life so far.