The power’s still off when Claire’s phone dies. She looks outside to see Liam making his way to the guesthouse. He notices she’s wet and Claire tells him she went back out because she couldn’t sleep and got caught in the rain. He notes that because of it there’ll be no work that day or the next.

Claire realizes she forgot to hide Marcia’s diary and worries Liam will see it; she moves to stand where Liam’s view will be blocked. She asks him when he thinks they’ll get the power back. He thinks the next day, but he isn’t sure. She wonders if the entire town might not have power and worries that she’s now entirely cut off. Liam “uneasy expression” (202) makes her wonder if he knew she was in the main house after all, but he asks her if she’d like to share a drink of muscadine wine. They drink it out of mugs.

He wants to know more about her, explaining how she isn’t easy to read. She says he’s the same way. They start exchanging questions because Claire feels he’s “on her side” (204). He wants to know why she’s really there and Claire reveals she came out to visit Natalie in 2002 and that Natalie died soon after. She explains she took the job because she felt close to her sister. He expresses sympathy for her loss. She then explains that Natalie was murdered by a man named Jeffrey Slater. Liam pours them more wine and they toast to Natalie.

The next morning, Claire wakes to a bright day. Liam and she hung out for a few hours the night before, exchanging small talk after the heaviness of the revelations about Natalie. She asked him about Marcia and Mitchell’s relationship. Liam thinks the dynamic is pretty conventional for the couple’s age. While he concedes they are a little odd, he notes that they just do things their own way. Claire asks if it worries him and Liam says no and tells her she shouldn’t worry either before leaving for the evening.

Claire decides to drive into town, which seems clandestine and dangerous. She feels as if Mitchell might come out and hold her captive, but she leaves without incident.

Claire gets to Ladmadaw, where the Main Street is mostly unpopulated and goes to the only restaurant. It has power and the woman at the counter assures her the place is set up for hurricanes. She wonders if Mitchell realized she was snooping around and deliberately caused the loss of power at the farm to prevent Claire from finding out more.

The woman at the register tells Claire she looks just like Natalie. She turns out to be Bethany Wheeler, Natalie’s friend from high school.

Although Bethany was once ever-present at Claire’s home, she stopped coming soon after Natalie disappeared, fading slowly out of their lives. Bethany did give testimony to the police. When Claire says she’s spending some time at Galloway farm, Bethany is visibly dismayed and irritated at the thought of the place. She notes with resentment that Natalie got a little obsessed with the place and was there all the time, even after she quit working there.

Bethany suggests it was a good place to party in the woods. She says that Natalie sometimes brought a couple of coworkers. Bethany then goes back to her duties and Claire sits at a table and recharges her devices. Ryan has left a few messages telling her he’s worried, but she’s still upset he didn’t believe her about Mitchell and decides not to call him back. She decides that she’s going to investigate Mitchell and calls UC-Berkeley to see if he’s an alum. She learns that the school didn’t have a psychology degree until 1988, long after Mitchell left. Claire is also told that a student disappeared in 1983: Katherine Ann Prichard.

Claire starts to add up all the missing girls associated with Mitchell. When Bethany leaves, she does a search for Katherine. She finds a picture of Katherine wearing the Berkeley sweatshirt she found under the floorboards in Mitchell’s room. She also learns that Katherine drove an orange camper. She goes to ask Bethany if she told the police everything that she told Claire, and Bethany says she told them all she knew. She told them she thought Natalie was seeing someone, whom she kept secret from even Bethany. She thought he was older and that they talked a lot in his car. She states that the police asked her about Jeffrey, whom she saw with Natalie only once. She says that despite being best friends, Natalie started to get distant when she started working at Galloway.

Claire brings up their parents’ divorce, but Bethany said it had more to do with the farm, which she thinks of as sinister.

Claire gets into her car feeling sick to her stomach. She remembers how strangely Natalie acted in 2002, the fights with her mother, and the sneaking out. She realizes that Jeffrey and Natalie must have both been employees at Galloway.

Claire decides to go to the Claxton Police Department to find Eric DiNello, who headed up Natalie’s case. Now the Chief, he asks after Claire’s mother, a friend of his from high school. She tells him she has new information on her sister’s case, mentioning Natalie’s association with Galloway Farm even after she was no longer employed there. She asks DiNello why they made the decision to search Jeffrey’s car. He points to what Bethany told them, but Claire notes that Bethany didn’t identify Jeffrey as Natalie’s boyfriend. DiNello points out the case is closed and Jeffrey was caught with the evidence in the car, but Claire is troubled he never confessed. DiNello laughs at her, noting that Jeffrey never confessed in order to avoid the state’s death penalty.

Claire tries to point out that Mitchell himself had a history, but DiNello dismisses this, telling her she has no proof. Besides, Natalie’s blood was found in Slater’s car and Slater had a criminal record. He assures Claire it had little to do with the farm except that it was the location where Jeffrey and Natalie met.

She thanks him for his time and as she’s walking out, he tells her to tell “Annie” hello. She’s confused. He then remembers that Claire’s mother doesn’t go by that name anymore, like she did when they were teens. Claire realizes Annaliese is Annie—the girl who was at the farm when Marcia arrived.

In her car, Claire opens the shoebox to find the photo of her parents. On the back is written, “Alan and Annaliese, March 1984” (235). She has Marcia’s diary with her, and she flips to where Marcia and Lily were in the house, her house. She now understands why her mother was so upset about Galloway: She knew Mitchell.

She calls her mother and leaves a message, letting her know that there are some things she might need to explain, telling her she’s staying at Galloway Farm. She looks at the picture of Bethany and Natalie at the farm and notices a vehicle in the background of the picture: Katherine’s missing orange camper hidden in the trees.

She gets a phone call that the film roll she found is now developed. When she gets the photos, however, she’s disappointed because they are of a woman in her 40s, not Natalie. She thinks the man in the shop gave her the wrong pictures, but he insists they are the right ones. She takes them, even though she dismisses them as useless. Instead, sets her sights on finding Katherine’s camper in the woods of Galloway Farm.

As she returns to Galloway Farm, Claire determines to investigate the woods when night falls to search for the camper. She’ll take pictures of it for evidence. Then, she’ll rescue Marcia, taking her with her as she leaves. Claire packs her things and then takes a tin of tea she bought at the restaurant up to Marcia at the house as a gift. She sits down on one of the rocking chairs next to Marcia on the porch and swaps their mugs, so that Marcia isn’t drinking what Mitchell usually gives her.

Mitchell arrives and asks where Claire went for the day. Faking cheer, she tells him she just went into town. He asks after her ankle. She tells him it’s much better and thanks him. Claire hopes that switching the drinks will make Marcia lucid enough to leave with her later. She says goodnight and heads off to the guesthouse after telling Marcia she hopes that they can meet again in the morning. She decides to read the rest of the diary before she heads out to find the camper in the woods.

Marcia learns she’s pregnant from taking a test in a stranger’s bathroom. An upset Marcia comes out of the bathroom to be blinded by the flash of a camera Lily has found. She doesn’t want any evidence left behind and makes Lily take out the roll of film. Lily, who is more cavalier, has scratched “Lily was here” (249) on the headboard. Lily asks if Marcia is okay. Marcia tells her she’s fine but Lily doesn’t believe her.

Although she doesn’t reveal this to Lily, Marcia has realized that while in the beginning, the farm felt like an escape from the oppression of her parents, it’s clear to her now it’s fake, an illusion of family and closeness. The picture of Annie with Alan on the refrigerator made her realize that Mitchell didn’t really look at her with that kind of love. Lily had taken the picture, but Marcia hid it in her diary and looks at it in private. Annie seems healthy and happy in an actual house, and Marcia feels she could have those things as well.

Marcia realizes that Lily has found a handgun. Marcia is tempted to kill herself with it, fearful of the future. The farm is no place to raise a child. She shows Lily the pregnancy test and asks her to help, telling her she has to leave the farm.

The owner of the home unexpectedly arrives and recognizes Marcia as the missing Rayburn girl. The woman warns them about Mitchell, who is “not a good person” (253). She identifies herself as a police officer named Carmen and offers to help them. Lily says they don’t need help, but Carmen continues to appeal to Marcia. Marcia is about to talk to the woman when Lily shoots her dead.

Claire is interrupted in her reading by the chimes of her alarm. It’s time to go to the woods. She now knows for sure that Marcia wanted to escape Mitchell and the farm.

Suddenly, she realizes that the photos she picked up in Ladmalaw earlier are not from 2002, but 1984. The woman in the majority of the pictures is Carmen, but the last picture shows Marcia looking startled. Claire realizes that her phone has minimal charge to power the flashlight and she better get going. She locks the guesthouse door and sneaks toward the tree line. She walks for about 50 minutes, then turns back. She trips and falls to the forest floor hard. When she gets up, she makes out her phone ahead and walks to retrieve it. Picking it up, she realizes she’s standing in a bed of blue wildflowers looking at Katherine’s rusty camper.