The morning after their devastating fight, Harris and the narrator go through the motions of their domestic routine with cold, hollow politeness. Harris announces he will spend one night a week—Mondays—at his office, mirroring the narrator's Wednesday nights in Monrovia. The narrator immediately suspects he might be having an affair with Caro, the young pop star he works with, though she also recognizes her own hypocrisy. She confides in Jordi, who urges her to give Harris time, quoting their shared Jungian self-help mantra that the initial reaction is not the eternal one. The narrator fears the situation is like the lag time after a plane crash but before the breaking news.

On Monday night alone with Sam, the narrator throws herself into creative mothering—sliding around in Tupperware shoes, eating dinner in the dark outside, fleeing coyote howls. She briefly considers hiring the retired FBI agent neighbor to surveil Harris. The next evening she scrutinizes Harris for signs of infidelity but finds nothing—only that he missed Sam. When Wednesday comes, she initially resists going to Monrovia, but both Sam and Harris seem to want their separate nights, so she drives out again.

Alone in the motel room, the narrator is overwhelmed by the realization that these nights apart may be the first steps toward divorce. She grieves the irreplaceable shared history she and Harris built—becoming parents, growing up together—and recognizes that no future relationship could replicate that accumulated intimacy. Around midnight she searches online for Davey's Hertz location in Sacramento, finding not Davey but a Yelp review mentioning a rude young woman named Denise. The narrator spirals into jealous, self-tormenting sexual fantasy about Denise and Davey, then masturbates against her own will, disgusted with herself.

Thursday afternoon she picks up Sam from school. Sam has brought the giant metal spoon for show-and-tell, telling classmates about the narrator's supposed cross-country drive. The narrator reflects painfully on how Sam lives authentically every day and may soon recognize their parents' hypocrisy. She muses about what it would mean to be a woman without secrets—unapologetic—and connects her fear of social rejection to the historical persecution of women as witches.

Back home, the narrator and Sam bake cupcakes with cream filling. When Harris enters the kitchen, the narrator holds her breath, desperately hoping he'll eat one—a gesture that would signal things might be okay. She feels connected to generations of women who tried to fix everything through food. Sam eagerly tells Harris about the cream inside. But Harris is only looking for something, and whatever it is, it isn't in the kitchen. He leaves without eating a cupcake.