Cassie uses a doorway to return to her childhood home in Myrtle Creek in late-summer 2013, almost a year after her earlier meeting with her grandfather in Matt’s diner. She sits on the porch at night, listening to insects and rain-soaked earth, watching the light in her grandfather’s converted garage workshop.

When her grandfather finishes tidying and comes out, he initially thinks Cassie is the younger version of her who has gotten out of bed. Seeing Cassie clearly, he realizes she is older and stops, then joins her on the porch. Cassie confirms that, for her, it has been ten years since she last saw him, and her grandfather admits he had almost convinced himself their earlier meeting was imagined.

Cassie asks how he is feeling and senses he is already being changed by cancer, though he does not openly acknowledge anything is wrong. Cassie chooses not to warn him or try to alter events, recognizing that she cannot change the past without breaking the chain of causes that led to who she is.

Asked why she has come, Cassie admits she needed to feel she still has a home before doing something “hard and scary.” Her grandfather responds with blunt pragmatism and anger at life’s cruelty, insisting that the only way forward is to keep going, refuse to be beaten, and get the hard thing done.

He goes inside and returns with two bottles of Coke, and they drink together on the porch. When he asks if this is the last time he will see her, Cassie says she hopes not. At his prompting, Cassie spends the rest of the drink telling him about her life and frames it as a story about a magical book that can open doors to anywhere, while he listens with childlike wonder.