An intoxicated Joseph arrives at Emily’s house one night with a suicide note, then passes out on the porch. Emily wakes him and tells him that he must live for his children’s sake, just as she has done while Joseph has been married to Lola. Joseph tells her that he cannot leave the land to her children because he must escape the violence of the nightriders. Furious, Emily tells him of the conversation T.O. overheard. She reminds him that her family has a long history of women left behind by the white men who fathered their children. The only one who escaped was Bet, who married a Black man. Joseph takes heart and writes a second will, leaving half his land and all of his money to his children. The other half of his land will go to A.J. (Antoine Morat’s son and Joseph’s nephew). Emily advises him to file the will with an out-of-town lawyer.

This chapter includes facsimiles of Joseph’s suicide note and his revised will.

T.O. continues to sneak around his father’s house, overhearing vicious arguments between Joseph and Lola over Emily and the will. Lola accuses Joseph of marrying her solely to regain his reputation. T.O. is heading back home when he overhears two nightriders coming through the woods; Antoine Morat is among them. Morat tells the other man that he doesn’t want to kill both Joseph and Lola. The other man tells Morat that they must kill Lola as well because she stands to inherit after Joseph’s death. T.O. knows that he cannot save his father and Lola because he is a Black man. He needs the help of a white man, but he cannot think of one who would help, so he returns home.

Two days later, the sheriff brings news that Joseph and Lola are dead; Joseph allegedly killed Lola and himself while in a drunken rage. Emily and the other women remain calm during the entire visit, denying any knowledge of the violence or of Joseph’s state of mind. The sheriff leaves, satisfied with their answers. Emily warns her son to do nothing. Newspaper notices about sale of land and the second will appear, but when the courts disregard the second will, T.O. grows increasingly furious despite his mother’s attempts to calm him. She counsels caution because she knows that nightriders will kill T.O. if he confronts them. She encourages him to talk to Antoine Morat to get more news about the estate.

T.O. visits Antoine Morat, who calls T.O. “boy” throughout the conversation. T.O. tells Antoine that the land in Joseph’s estate belongs to his family, but Antoine threatens the family by stating that they will lose what they already have if they continue to make their claim for Joseph’s land. Angered by the threat, T.O. tells Antoine that he overheard Antoine and another man on the night they went to kill Joseph and Lola. Antoine tells T.O. that he must keep this knowledge to himself, insisting that because T.O. is Black, his word counts for nothing against a white man’s word in court. In the end, Antoine tries to bargain with T.O. by offering to be generous with the family as long as T.O. keeps Antoine’s secret.

A drawn-out battle for Joseph’s estate ensues between Antoine and Lola’s heirs. The newspapers, testimony, and common gossip all paint Joseph’s life as a cautionary tale about the result of Black and white people intermingling. With the exception of T.O., Emily’s family is too busy working the farm and caring for an ailing Suzette to pay attention to the controversy.

Antoine comes to Cornfine Bayou with a letter in which Joseph tells Antoine’s son, A.J., that he intends to leave his estate to A.J. if A.J. agrees to care for his children. With the second will unacknowledged, the letter becomes proof that Joseph’s land should go to the Morats. Antoine promises to take care of T.O.’s family financially if they relinquish their claim on the land, but he never makes good on his promises, so T.O. sues the estate. However, he loses the case because the court does not recognize him as a legitimate child of Joseph since Joseph and Emily never married.

This chapter includes facsimiles of Joseph’s letter to A.J. and court documents referencing the children; the documents employ common racist slurs of the period.

Emily still grieves for Joseph, but she dances for their family at their Sunday suppers. Philomene keeps the younger children away from the aging Suzette, who talks as if she is still on the plantation engaging in small acts of rebellion, such as spitting in her enslavers’ wine. Suzette tells one of her great-great-granddaughters never to let a dark-skinned man touch her light-colored hair, much less marry her, since she would be too good for such a man. One day, Philomene feels dread when she catches two of the children eating dirt in the yard—an omen of death. Suzette dies shortly afterward. Philomene reflects on her life and on the lives of her daughter, mother, and grandmother, thinking, “If Emily was the bloom in Philomene’s garden and Elisabeth the root that reached down deep enough to anchor itself and search for nourishment, Suzette had been the soil itself, buffeted by winds, withstanding storms, baked by the sun” (506). Philomene’s own death is then foreshadowed.

It is 1911, and T.O. has still not found direction in his life. He cannot pass for white because doing so would require leaving his family behind in Louisiana. His mother expects him to marry someone with light skin, but he decides that this glorification of whiteness will stop with him. He marries Geneva (Eva) Brew, a woman whose “ginger-colored” skin and features mark her as being of Black descent. The young couple settles on Cornfine Bayou.

From the start, Emily excludes Eva—an English-speaking Baptist who is direct and assertive. Emily is well-versed in the passive-aggressiveness of Black, Catholic Creole women of Cane River. She also speaks French even though she knows Eva cannot understand her. Eva and T.O. have their own children and move away to Colfax once Eva can no longer tolerate Emily. Eva has no qualms about taking in washing and doing manual labor to support her family, and T.O. does odd jobs to contribute.

Nearing death, Philomene calls her children and grandchildren to her. She tells T.O. that she has had a glimpsing of a woman of their line speaking before a racially diverse crowd that respectfully listens. Before she dies, she urges T.O. not to waste his heritage and says that he must add to it.

This chapter is interspersed with pictures of the family that reflect the varying shades of white, also featuring a few people—Eva among them—with skin that is darker.

Emily walks to catch the bus into town. Cane River has changed. The woods and logging companies are gone, leaving behind a shrinking town. Emily still has her pride. She sees traces of the beauty she had as a younger woman, including her light skin, thin facial features, and mostly straight and long hair. Her daughters Josephine and Mary still clash, and Josephine was so exasperated this morning that she exclaimed that she would have married the darkest man she knew just to escape the house. A mud dauber’s nest falls on the porch—a sign of very bad luck. No one who knows Emily is on the bus, so she sits in the front with the white people. She sees a newspaper article about the push to name the highway after a distant, white Derbanne relative. The woman next to her expresses little interest when Emily tells her about her family connection to the Derbannes. Emily sometimes finds herself living more in the past than in the present.

Once in Colfax, Emily goes to a store where the clerk doesn’t recognize her. She muses about her granddaughters, including Willie Dee, whom she describes as “high yellow” in skin color. She also feels pride as she thinks about the $1,300 that is sewn in her mattress at home. A white woman who recognizes Emily comes into the store and demands to be served first, so Emily leaves. She overhears a candidate for sheriff explaining his platform of putting Black people in their place: a lower one for which they should be grateful. She is hungry by then, but she refuses to buy food from the café by the bus stop because Black people must take their food through the side door. One customer assumes that she is white and invites her to come in. She boards the bus and sits in the white section with pride. The narrative ends.

The novel closes with an excerpt from Gurtie Fredieu’s family history, which states that Emily died in 1936 with her money sewn in her mattress and that the two granddaughters who lived with her never married.