In a recollection set during the summer of the painting, Joar rushed back from the museum in a storm, realizing the knife he had hidden had been replaced by two taped bars of soap. He panicked, convinced his mother had found and taken it. Driving at full speed, he and his friends saw an ambulance by the harbor and, outside Joar’s building, a police car and a cluster of harbor workers, including Kimkim’s father. Joar forced his way past them and into the stairwell.

Inside his room, Joar found his mother lying on the floor with the window ajar and soil blown in from the flower box. In the kitchen in the present, Joar tells Louisa that his plan had been to lure his father with a decoy bird box and retrieve the knife from the window to kill his father as he reached for it; his mother’s unexpected presence disrupted the plan. Ted adds that Kimkim had tried to follow Joar inside but was blocked by the men. A howl came from inside, followed by a long, unbearable silence.

Ted reflects on the harbor men’s shame, remembering Kimkim’s father meeting Kimkim’s accusing gaze. Ted remarks on men’s violence as a threat to women’s health, which Louisa bluntly names as “men.” Joar recounts how everyone around them “knew” about the abuse but maintained silence in the name of workplace loyalty and survival—trust that began with safety on the docks and metastasized into complicity about everything else.

Joar describes finding his mother small and fragile, checking for blood, and hearing her whisper his name and cry. Ted recalls Kimkim later saying it was the first time he saw his father cry, hiding his face behind eight fingers. Joar explains that after the accident at the harbor, the men and the police came to inform his mother; fearing for her child first, she ran straight into Joar’s room and collapsed there, weeping until Joar arrived. When he reached her, she confessed she had taken his knife and would have killed her husband if he had come home.

Joar admits that, lying on the floor beside his mother, he felt free for the first time. He remembers her worrying he was wet from a water fight and might catch a cold, still protecting him even then. Ted, from his memory outside with Ali and Kimkim, recalls noticing a bird land by the window and fly off.

The chapter closes by returning to the accident: a construction crane turned too quickly in the gale, a steel beam swung, and Joar’s father—distracted and unwarned—was struck. Joar muses about how many coworkers saw it and who shouted “WATCH OUT!” The narrative emphasizes how little can alter fate—mere grams of weight, a fraction of a second, or a small bird’s landing—just as a bar of soap can replace a knife and redirect a life.