Two weeks after the devastating fight, the narrator and Harris remain in a painful stalemate. Harris cannot look at the narrator directly, and the narrator feels trapped between the hopelessness of continuing their marriage as-is and the bleak prospect of divorce. She acknowledges they have a limited window before the toxic atmosphere permanently damages Sam.

Inspired by Jordi's suggestion about open-sourcing knowledge, the narrator decides to "open-source" her marital crisis by inviting married friends of various ages to the Excelsior motel room for one-on-one conversations. She interviews them one by one, offering snacks and prosecco, seeking insight into what other women want from their relationships and how they manage desire and compromise. Cassie, fifty-three, advises her to ride it out, citing a Simone de Beauvoir quote about wanting without having. Nazanin, forty-nine, confesses a secret desire for a masculine partner in another city but dismisses it as too small a fraction of herself to act on. Isra, fifty-one, a trans woman, encourages the narrator to trust her desires and reveals her own yearning: cryogenic preservation for a chance at an authentic second youth.

Shareen, forty-seven, gives the narrator a lymphatic drainage massage and shares that she left her first husband Steven without hating him—she simply hadn't known herself at twenty-four. She detects a "giant ball" of anger in the narrator's throat. The narrator tries to connect this to root anger at her parents but struggles to articulate it. Jordi visits and takes a bath, admiring the room. She notices that the three mismatched green tiles behind the toilet have been replaced—the star pattern is now complete. The narrator learns from Skip that Claire and Davey came back before moving to Sacramento to finish the floor, a gesture that deeply moves her. She photographs the completed tiles as a kind of emotional "backup plan," fantasizing about contacting Davey if things get desperate.

The next day, the narrator interviews younger friends. Destiny, twenty-nine, challenges the narrator's shame about her desires and suggests the narrator's sense of being "bad" may trace back to her parents. Caitlyn, thirty-two, openly describes her nonmonogamous arrangement with her husband, involving cuckolding. Talia, thirty-seven, a historical biologist, argues that marriage isn't the problem—rather, society has lost the communal customs like dances that once made monogamy sustainable by allowing sanctioned physical contact with others. After completing all the interviews, the narrator feels the open-sourcing didn't produce a clear answer but drives home at top speed to be with Sam.