Evelyn and Harry drive up Hillcrest Road to stage photographs that will support a narrative of an affair between them. Evelyn calibrates her appearance to look plausibly disheveled rather than perfectly styled, and they practice looking rumpled and intimate, waiting long enough for any passerby to believe they’ve been at it for a while.

After a false alarm with a neighbor’s car, Harry pivots to something deeper: he proposes that he and Evelyn actually marry. He explains he wants companionship, family, and someone to bring home to his relatives, acknowledging he cannot offer romantic love in the conventional sense. When Evelyn admits she wants to be in love, Harry points her back to Celia, suggesting a mutually protective arrangement—Evelyn with Harry, Celia with John. Weighing the practical benefits and her feelings, Evelyn agrees.

Another car arrives and a photographer jumps out. Evelyn and Harry deliver the performance, kissing slowly and intensely while Harry moves his hand down the top of Evelyn’s dress. The resulting image, published the following week, is lurid enough to convince the public that they were caught in a genuine affair.

Immediately afterward, news breaks that Joy Nathan is pregnant by Rex, completing the narrative Evelyn engineered. The four of them—Evelyn, Harry, Rex, and Joy—become national gossip fodder, castigated as unfaithful and shameless. The controversy has the intended effect: Carolina Sunset sets a record for its length of time in theaters.

With the film’s success secured and the public story cemented, Evelyn and Rex finalize their divorce. They toast with dirty martinis to their “successful union,” closing their professional arrangement on amicable, strategic terms while Evelyn moves toward a new partnership with Harry.