Chapter 2 returns to Larry’s recollections of 1941. War is on the horizon, although they believe that it is contained in Europe. In the summer of 1941, things seem to be getting better. Despite Sally’s polio, the Morgans’ professional situation improves, buoyed by Larry’s steady job as a publisher and by Larry and Sid’s successful textbook. However, when the war comes, it indirectly unsettles their lives. Larry moves to Washington to become a journalist, and the Langs drop off the radar. Later, Charity is hospitalized for a mental health condition. 

In 1945, they meet again, convening in a special dinner party. At the dinner, there is a small fight between Sid and Charity over a trivial subject—when the dishes would be done, and in his retrospective account, the older Larry comments, “I am sure now, and was pretty sure then, that she didn’t even know she was punishing Sid for disappointing all her hopes” (223).

In Chapter 3, the story shifts back to the narrative present as Sally joins Larry to talk with Moe and Hallie. Together, they recount their families’ lives, discussing the moves from the East Coast back to the West and how the families have grown up together. Sally tells Hallie about how Charity and Sid held up their own lives to help Sally and Larry when Sally was first diagnosed with polio. Hallie is taken aback, as her parents had never told her of these acts of love and selflessness. Now that Charity herself is near death, Sally is ashamed of what has happened to their friendship. She says, “For years now we haven’t been as close as we used to be. I let myself get irritated at her way of taking charge of everything. But I shouldn’t have ever let myself forget what a wonderfully unselfish friend she has been” (236).

Chapter 4 takes place in the years following World War II, during a trip the Langs and Morgans take to Italy. During the trip, Larry reflects on his own personal trajectory, from his humble beginnings in Albuquerque to his work in academia. As narrator, Larry reveals that he had no intention to follow in his father’s footsteps but instead fostered his own ambitions. In Italy, the young Larry has the intuition that he has “arrived” but is unsure of what that means. He muses, “There, one September morning, it hit me that things were altogether other than what they had been for a long time. Wherever it was that we were going, we had arrived, or at least come into the clear road” (242). Italy is meant to be a restful vacation for Larry and Sally, yet Larry habitually rises early to work. One morning, he wakes Sally to watch the vendors and their animals arrive at the marketplace, and they remark together on how strange the experience is for them, as Americans, even though it is perfectly customary in this different context. They have learned to manage Sally’s handicaps due to polio, but residual stresses remain; Sally worries about being a burden to Larry and his work. Elsewhere on the trip, they and the Langs learn Italian and visit important historical and cultural sites.

Chapter 5, the shortest chapter in the novel, describes the meeting between the Morgans and the Langs in the present-day narrative. Larry pays special attention to the environmental details, stating, “All through among the larger trees, tall saplings as thick as a man’s arm or leg have been shade-killed, and many, in falling, have got hung up in the trees around them. They give the woods the look of an Uccello or Piero battle painting with long slanted lances” (269).

Hallie and Moe help Sally out of the car and point to Sid and Charity on the terrace. They see Charity first, and the narrator-Larry expresses his own negative feelings toward her, noting, “Something in the set of her head and the stiffness of her neck says no, says refusal, says obstinate rejection” (271). Despite his misgivings, Sally strains to meet the Langs with enthusiasm, hurrying on her canes, and when Charity sees Sally struggling to meet her, Larry’s thoughts about Charity change abruptly; he cannot help but see in her eyes, “that incredible, gleaming, ardent smile, a transfiguration, a bursting to the surface of pure delight, uncomplicated love” (271).