Saul greets Aaron at the door, mentioning a planned family dinner. Eliza suggests that they go outside. At their childhood meeting spot, a fallen log in the yard, Eliza tells Aaron that she thinks their parents are no longer sleeping together. Aaron confesses that he wasn’t camping but at a religious place. Eliza promises to keep his secret.

Miriam arrives home disheveled, dirty, and smelling of garbage. After seeing her reflection in a mirror, she is horrified and runs upstairs, with Saul following. Left alone, Eliza and Aaron wordlessly clean the entire kitchen, falling into the rhythm of their old sibling unity.

Later, Eliza asks to sleep in Aaron’s room. They lie back-to-back. Aaron tells her to be glad for him. Saul holds Miriam all night as she lies still. She has a nightmare about the abandoned house and sees what she believes are her dead parents inside it.

The next morning, Eliza hears Aaron chanting in his room and recognizes it as something they secretly share. A new school year begins. Eliza is in Ms. Paul’s sixth-grade class. Her focus on letters causes trouble; she has difficulty reading aloud, and she meets with the school psychologist after the school becomes concerned about her difficulty separating reality from imagination.

Over the fall and winter, Aaron uses school clubs as cover for his temple time. The family settles into a tense routine. One evening, the phone rings during dinner. Saul learns that Miriam has been arrested and leaves Eliza home alone for the first time. To cope with her fear, Eliza recites Abulafia’s instructions in her room, finding comfort in his imagined voice.

A police sergeant tells Saul that Miriam was found in a stranger’s house in Jenkintown, holding a vase. He takes Saul to a U-Store-It facility and opens a unit that Miriam has rented for 18 years. Inside, Saul finds a vast, intricate installation of stolen objects arranged in complex, highly ordered patterns. He is awed and overwhelmed, realizing that the space is interactive as suspended objects respond to his movement. The sergeant tells Saul that Miriam called it her “kaleidoscope.”

Saul returns home to find Eliza asleep on her floor. Under Miriam’s side of the bed, he finds a box containing a pink rubber ball from her childhood. He discovers that Aaron left a message; when the operator connects him to the last caller, a man answers with the Hare Kṛṣṇa chant.

The next morning, Saul tells Eliza that Miriam is in the hospital because she was sick and confused. At Miriam’s arraignment, she doesn’t speak and communicates only through her lawyer. She is committed to the Holliswood Center for psychiatric observation.

Saul goes to Aaron’s high school but learns that he’s absent. Lacking a last name for Charlie, Saul pretends to remember that Charlie’s parents were taking Aaron to visit Miriam. He then leaves, reassuring himself that Aaron is safe and will return home.

Eliza concludes that her parents are getting a divorce and that “sick” is a code word. She resolves to play along, believing that this explanation makes the situation easier to manage.

Saul visits Miriam at the Holliswood Center. In the day room, Miriam is unnervingly still. She tells Saul that she’s not drugged and confirms that she was in a stranger’s house. She asks if the police showed him her kaleidoscope and explains her actions as Tikkun Olam, an idea she got from him years ago. Saul gives her the box with the rubber ball. Upon seeing its scuffs, Miriam becomes aggravated, demands that he leave, and is escorted back to her room.

Saul sits Eliza down and explains the truth: Miriam has a mental illness, has been stealing for years, and was arrested. Eliza asks if her mother is a burglar in a “loony bin.” Saul rejects this language and explains that mental illness as a medical condition affecting the mind.

That night, Aaron calls. He explains that his friend is actually Chali and that he has been spending time at the ISKCON temple. He says that he doesn’t want to come home. After threatening to call the police, Saul convinces Aaron to give him the address. From her room, Eliza overhears their argument about cults and brainwashing, as well as Aaron’s insistence that he intends to continue his involvement.

Eliza finds Aaron in an orange robe. He warns her to make sure that her spelling is what she wants, not just what Saul wants, cautioning her against being influenced without questioning it.

Saul learns that Miriam hasn’t worked in 10 years and that the family has been living off a trust. He resolves to read Aaron’s books and talk with him nightly, determined to prevent further distance between them.

At breakfast the next morning, Saul prepares a meal and encourages a sense of routine, while Aaron maintains his new practices. That evening, Aaron cooks a meal for the family according to his religious guidelines, but the food is poorly prepared. When Saul questions it, Aaron becomes defensive and retreats to his room.

Eliza secretly borrows The Life of the Future World from Saul’s study and begins practicing Abulafia’s final techniques on her own. She copies the 72 letter triplets of God’s name, each requiring specific vowels, head movements, and breathing patterns. Meanwhile, a tense routine settles over the household. Saul lets Aaron go to the ISKCON temple on weekends and keeps weekly hospital reports on Miriam hidden under the bed. Eliza memorizes the triplets to the tune of “Oh, Susannah” and begins losing sleep, her mind racing with persistent, repetitive thoughts. During one dinner argument, Saul discovers Aaron chanting on japa beads and confiscates them.

Spelling-bee season begins. Saul gets permission to attend the class bee. The night before, Aaron accuses Saul of lying, claiming that Miriam simply left them. Enraged, Saul reveals that Miriam has been stealing for years and is now under psychiatric care, speaking harshly about her behavior and criticizing Aaron’s beliefs. Eliza screams for him to stop. Aaron slaps Saul and runs from the room.

Upset, Eliza takes The Life of the Future World to her room. She begins permuting the Hebrew word for “light.” The pen drops from her hand. She loses physical control, experiencing an overwhelming torrent of words, intense bodily sensations, and rapid, shifting images of a vast shape. As the experience continues, she chants the first triplets of God’s name and feels a strong expansion of awareness. For a brief moment, she sees the face of the shape, which contains every face that ever was, with pain and pleasure becoming impossible to distinguish. The experience ends abruptly as she contracts back toward her body.

The next morning, she wakes on the floor, sore, in clothes smelling of urine. At the class bee, when given the word “origami,” it prompts an image of unfolding. Eliza deliberately misspells it, and Saul covers his mouth in shock. The teacher asks if she is sure; Eliza nods.