After Gabriel’s departure, Thomas continues occasionally visiting Hannah and Josiah for dinner. In private moments, Hannah asks Thomas for news of Gabriel. Thomas tells her that Gabriel and Isabella broke up before he left for London. Gabriel now shares an apartment in London’s West End with a roommate but travels constantly for matches.

Thomas offers to show Hannah videos of Gabriel’s matches, but she declines. He narrates one bout in which Gabriel’s prosthetic leg falls off mid-match, and Gabriel improvises by using it as a weapon against his opponent and a crooked referee. Hannah finds the story horrifying. Thomas withholds certain details from Hannah, including Gabriel’s wrestling persona as Anakim, the Amish Giant, and online reports involving women, a marijuana arrest in Seoul, and other scandals.

Gabriel has sent Thomas tickets and backstage passes for the upcoming championship match in Chicago. When Josiah announces he will be away during that same week in August, Thomas invites Hannah to accompany him. After a long pause, Hannah accepts. As they finish the dishes, she breaks her usual habit of placing plates in the drying rack—a precaution to avoid touching Thomas’s hands—and instead hands him a wet plate directly. That night, Thomas lies awake contemplating the intimacy her words and gesture suggest.

Trey writes a letter to Gabriel in London after obtaining his address from Thomas. Following a fly-fishing trip with Thomas, Trey feels compelled to offer fatherly advice about the dangers accompanying fame and fortune.

He expresses pride in Gabriel’s athletic ability, calling him the finest football player he has ever seen, and he admits Gabriel’s career-ending injury has haunted him and nearly made him quit coaching. He now has a daughter with his wife, Merryn, and loves his new life in Lakota.

Drawing from his own past with drugs, women, and gambling—addictions that cost him everything before his move to Lakota—Trey warns Gabriel about the temptations of success. He notes that Gabriel’s life is now fully public, and he cautions that each time Gabriel succumbs to illicit pleasures, he loses a piece of himself he cannot recover. He concludes by encouraging Gabriel to enjoy his success but to live, choose, and love wisely.

On the morning of their trip to Chicago, Thomas picks up Hannah at sunrise. She brings warm wild raspberry muffins and tells him that Josiah knows about the trip and will not report her to the bishop. During the drive south, they share stories of their childhoods before falling into comfortable silence.

They stop at a nursing home in Milwaukee to visit Thomas’s mother, Dorothy Kennedy, who is 93 and largely nonverbal in the memory care ward. Hannah examines framed photographs on the wall, including pictures of Thomas as a boy and with his late wife, Angela. She finds a monograph Dorothy wrote during her career as an English professor—a book about Emily Dickinson. Hannah mentions she knows Dickinson’s poetry from a hidden book her own mother once owned. Thomas offers Hannah the book as a loan.

Dorothy mistakes Hannah for Angela and reaches for her. Hannah takes her hand and speaks to her in German. Dorothy is surprised but responds in German. Thomas explains his mother learned it as a girl in Dresden. Hannah translates Dorothy’s words—she calls Thomas a dreamer who collects butterflies and recalls visiting an art gallery with her father for ice cream. Hannah says a prayer in German before they leave.

As they drive toward Chicago, Thomas suggests visiting the Art Institute of Chicago, and Hannah becomes visibly nervous.

Hannah recalls her strict upbringing under her father Absalom, who forbade all forms of art and imagery in their home. He removed pictured labels from store-bought goods, covered calendar images with black paper, and even chipped a decorative rose off a ceramic tea warmer. When Hannah’s sister Meg brought home a library book about Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, Absalom tore it in half—until their mother defied him and insisted that Meg return it. Her father also banned all spices except salt, calling even flavor a form of pride.

As Hannah tells Thomas this story on the museum steps, she is immobilized by fear and the weight of her father’s certain disapproval. Thomas kindly suggests they do something else, but Hannah resolves to go inside.

Inside the Art Institute, Hannah is transported. She admires famous works, including a Monet painting of haystacks, but is most overwhelmed by the museum’s collection of religious art. Before Francisco de Zurbarán’s 1627 painting of Christ on the cross, her legs buckle, and she falls to her knees. The experience transforms her fear into renewed faith.

Unable to find words for the glory she has witnessed, Hannah takes Thomas’s hand as they leave. At a pizzeria, she tastes deep-dish pizza with oregano and red pepper flakes for the first time, delighting in flavors her father had forbidden. Thomas reaches across the table and takes her hand, and she does not pull away.

Thomas and Hannah arrive at Chicago’s United Center after the matches have begun. An usher mistakes Hannah’s plain Amish dress and kapp for a costume. During intermission, fans throughout the arena don Amish costumes in support of Gabriel. The main event is announced as a fight for the world championship. The current champion, the Sheik of Siam, a large Japanese man with owl-like tattoos around his eyes, is carried to the ring on a palanquin.

When the announcer introduces the challenger, the crowd chants Gabriel’s wrestling name: Anakim. Gabriel enters in plain Amish clothing, carrying a mature angora ram with golden-painted horns on his shoulders. Thomas glances over and sees Hannah weeping. In the ring, Gabriel rips off his shirt, revealing his heavily tattooed torso.

Gabriel dominates the early match, but as the crowd chants for his finishing move, a masked man interferes—throwing a bloody goat fleece over Gabriel’s head. The Sheik and the masked man attack Gabriel together, beating him bloody, then pull off his prosthetic leg and use it to strike him while the crowd screams.

Hannah stands and says she hates this. When Thomas reminds her that they have backstage passes and that Gabriel is expecting them, she refuses and insists they leave immediately. Thomas follows her out.

Hannah weeps on the drive home, overwhelmed by shame at Gabriel’s exploitation of his Amish heritage for fame. She had joyfully told her sister and Abiah about her plans to see him, and now she feels that her prayers for a happy reunion have been denied.

Around midnight, they near Milwaukee, and Thomas asks to show her something. He drives to the brick house where he lived with his late wife, Angela. He recounts their painful history of lost pregnancies that drove them emotionally apart. He then tells her the story of Angela’s death. One Saturday morning, rushing to an emergency veterinary call, Thomas backed his truck up and felt it lurch. He discovered that he had run over Angela, who deliberately positioned herself beneath the tire where he could not see her. The police investigation and public suspicion drove him from Milwaukee to Lakota. Hannah comforts him, telling him he must forgive both Angela and himself.

Hannah sleeps for the remainder of the drive, waking near home around two in the morning. Thomas leans across the seat and kisses her on the cheek. She looks at her father’s house, which is dark, before she goes inside.

Later that night, Hannah is woken by bright light and rumbling. From her window, she sees her father’s house engulfed in flames. She runs two miles to neighbors for help. By morning, the house is destroyed, and firefighters find Absalom’s charred remains in his bathtub.

Returning home, Hannah finds an envelope addressed to her in her father’s handwriting, slid under her door. Later, she wishes that she had thrown it in the fire without opening it.