The chapter opens with Ted admitting privately that he has not told Louisa about the knife Ali gave Joar. Joar hid the knife through winter and spring, finally keeping it in his backpack as summer neared and his father’s vacation threatened a return to violence. Ted reflects on the difficulty of sharing his childhood.

As the train pauses at a gray station, Ted and Louisa trade teasing remarks. Ted notes Louisa’s kinship with Joar and Ali. He briefly leaves to the restaurant car, returning with a newspaper and a Coca-Cola, which sparks more banter about generations and technology.

The conductor enters to check tickets, and Louisa playfully tries to set him up with Ted by announcing they are celebrating Ted’s release from prison. The conductor awkwardly congratulates them and moves on, leaving Ted mortified while Louisa insists she was trying to make him seem “dangerous.”

Louisa then bluntly asks if Ali was raped. Ted, shaken, confirms by recounting Ali’s fragmented disclosures: her father, who preferred to be a “buddy” and kept a revolving party at home, neglected responsibilities and filled the apartment with strangers. One night a friend of her father drugged her soda; she awoke naked beneath him, fought free, escaped by jumping out a window, hid for a day, and returned unnoticed. She later stood repeatedly on a rooftop contemplating suicide. Eventually her father moved them to a new town to escape debts, which is how she met Ted and Joar. Ted recalls Ali’s awe at his functioning home and her instinct to reach for a knife when startled, adding that she slept with a knife under her pillow.

Ted tells Louisa that for Ali, saying “I believe in you” meant more than love. Louisa notes Ali and her friend Fish would have liked each other. Louisa asks about the artist’s skull motif; Ted says the artist “stole” the skulls from a janitor, emphasizing the artist’s view that art is shaped by coincidences.

Ted reveals there was a youth art competition when they were fourteen, which Joar used to persuade the artist to create the painting, but he calls it a different story. Louisa suddenly worries about hearing the ending, realizing that while Ted survived, others he speaks about might have died. After a pause, she steels herself and tells Ted to continue.