Five days into her stay at the Crawford house, Lowen feels time dragging and learns from Myrna that Verity has a fever and will stay upstairs all day. From Verity's office, Lowen watches Jeremy sitting alone and grieving on the porch and dock. Their brief eye contact heightens Lowen's attraction and anxiety, leaving her unsettled enough to consider taking Xanax again.

Before Lowen can take any medication, she hears Crew scream from upstairs and rushes to Verity's room. She finds Crew bleeding from a cut under his chin, with a knife on the floor beside him. In the bathroom, while cleaning the wound, Lowen asks what happened, and Crew says, "Mommy said I'm not supposed to touch her knife," which alarms Lowen because it sounds as if Verity recently spoke to him.

Jeremy arrives, tends to Crew, and asks Lowen what happened. Lowen explains that Crew was in Verity's bedroom and that she saw a knife. When Jeremy silently asks her to go confirm, Lowen reluctantly returns to Verity's room to look for it.

Inside the room, the knife has vanished. As Lowen searches the floor and under the bed, she realizes Verity's head has shifted and that Verity is staring directly at her. Terrified that Verity may have moved and hidden the knife, Lowen backs out of the room in panic and struggles to regain control before returning to Jeremy.

Lowen tells Jeremy she cannot find the knife, though she insists she thought she saw one. After Jeremy goes to check for himself and teasingly thanks her for helping Crew, Lowen reflects on how frightened she is of Verity and how strong her feelings for Jeremy have become. Convinced more than ever that Verity is as monstrous as the autobiography suggests, Lowen breaks her promise to stop and opens the hidden manuscript to read another chapter.