On the day of Katrina’s disappearance, Aidan and Janine exchange text messages. He tells her that he wasn’t able to get what she wanted. When he tells her not to worry, she gets angry.

The day she disappears, Katrina goes to Mark’s apartment. She is there to tell Mark that Darden killed Doug to make him a scapegoat and that Blair, Stevenson is implicated in the coverup. Sergeant McKinney calls Katrina and tells her that Cleo went to someone’s house. Katrina asks for the address.

Katrina meets with Mark and tells him everything she knows. She also tells him that she thinks Darden is threatening Cleo and that she has the NYPD following her daughter. After Katrina leaves Mark’s house, she calls Emily Trachtenberg, a New York Times reporter. Katrina tells Emily that she has a story for her. Katrina meets with Sergeant McKinney outside a brownstone.

Forty-five hours after Katrina disappeared, Cleo goes to the Yale registrar’s office to attempt to learn more about Reed Harding, the tutor who ran the creative writing club. She learns nothing. Cleo calls Vivienne and asks her to look into Reed. Vivienne tells Cleo that Reed dropped out of Yale during his sophomore year. She gives Cleo his last registered address. Cleo goes to the address in New Haven, but the owner tells her that Reed was murdered on Christmas Eve in 1992.

Cleo texts Detective Wilson and shares what she learned. Wilson tells Cleo that they need to talk about her boyfriend. Cleo assumes that the detective is referring to Kyle and ignores her text message.

As Cleo walks back to her dorm, Kyle confronts her. He tells her that Katrina sent a cop to beat him up and that his phone was stolen. Cleo runs away.

The day Katrina disappears, she watches Cleo leave a brownstone after being there for half an hour. She assumes that Cleo was having sex with someone there and follows Cleo back to her dorm. She receives another threatening message and is surprised that Darden is still trying to extort her.

After she leaves the dorm, Katrina asks Ahmed to trace the number sending extortion threats to Doug. She goes to her office, which has been ransacked, and meets with Mark and Phil Beaumont. Phil insists that Darden is not extorting Katrina but admits that they had been surveilling her. Katrina tells Phil that she has Doug’s emails. Phil responds, “You should keep in mind where those documents got Sinclair” (250). Katrina tells them that if they threaten Cleo again, she is going to the press with the information.

Katrina writes in her journal that she is sneaking out to see Reed. She is excited to see the “boy” she has a “crush on.”

Fifty-two hours after Katrina’s disappearance, Cleo meets with Vivienne. Vivienne tells her that a New York Times reporter contacted Vivienne to tell her that Katrina had passed documents along to her. Cleo tells Vivienne about the extortion threats that Katrina received. She asks Vivienne to find out the owner of the phone number.

As Cleo walks home, she runs into Annie. Annie tells her to tell Aidan to leave Janine alone because he won’t stop texting Janine. Annie is drunk. Cleo thinks about the affair that her father was having.

Cleo tells her therapist that Kyle has been sending his clients to harass her. When Dr. Bauer says that Cleo sounds “matter-of-fact” about it, Cleo responds that Will describes her as “disassociating.” The therapist encourages Cleo to tell someone about what is going on with Kyle. Cleo says that she has told Will. Then, she reveals that Will is her poetry professor.

The day Katrina disappears, Ahmed texts to tell her that the threatening messages Doug received came from a burner phone. Katrina suspects that this means it is not Darden because they would use a more sophisticated application to mask the number. She wonders if Aidan is sending the messages because he needs the money.

Later, Katrina meets with Jimmy, the burglar who stole Kyle’s phone. He gives her the phone but says that Kyle caught him and threatened to “kill that bitch” (261).

Katrina goes back to her apartment. She thinks she sees someone in Cleo’s room. When she sees her neighbor George, she tells him that if there is a “situation,” she doesn’t want him to call the police or tell Cleo or Aidan. He agrees.

Katrina goes inside and checks the apartment but doesn’t see anyone. Janine comes over. She seems upset and tells Katrina that her husband, Liam, has been having an affair for years. Katrina shares that Aidan is also having an affair. 

Janine asks if she can make a call in Katrina’s office. While she is in there, Katrina finds a piece of paper on which Aidan wrote her bank account numbers. Surprised, Katrina goes into her office to see what else Aidan did and finds Janine searching the office.

Janine tells Katrina that she wants the phone Katrina stole from Kyle because it has pictures of Annie on it. She says that Aidan told her, and Katrina realizes that Aidan has been having an affair with Janine, not Bella. She grabs a kitchen knife and tells Janine to leave.

Seventy-one hours after her mother disappeared, Cleo waits for Aidan in the kitchen. She is processing the knowledge that Janine was having an affair with her father. As she waits, she gets a text message from Detective Wilson demanding to know her location. Cleo tells her that she is in Park Slope, and Wilson says that she is on her way.

Aidan arrives, and Cleo confronts him about his affair with Janine. He admits that it went on for years and that Annie had caught them together. He tells Cleo that he and Janine were together the night Katrina disappeared and leaves.

Cleo searches Katrina’s bedroom and finds Kyle’s phone. The doorbell rings, and Will is there. He offers to make dinner, and Cleo tells him what she learned in New Haven. Will gives her a book of poetry. He spills wine on his shirt and goes to the bathroom to clean it off. Cleo opens the book and reads the inscription: “Please promise me you’ll be a writer. G-d gives the gift to few” (278).

On the day of Katrina’s disappearance, Katrina hears the doorbell ring after Janine leaves. She assumes it is Cleo, but it is Reed. She is shocked because she assumed that Reed died when she stabbed him in the neck years ago. He tells Katrina that he is Cleo’s poetry professor, William Butler, and that he has been sleeping with her daughter. He claims that if Katrina hadn’t done what she did, he would “have been tenured at Harvard fifteen years ago” (281). Katrina reminds Reed that he drugged and raped her before she stabbed him in the neck. He says that when he realized that Cleo was in his class, he decided to date her to get his revenge on Katrina.

He demands that Katrina give him the $3 million she inherited from Gladys Greene. When Katrina logs into her bank account, it is empty, and she realizes that Aidan stole the money. Katrina and Reed fight, and she hits her head.

Cleo realizes that the inscription in the book that Will gave her is identical to the one in her mother’s copy of Leaves of Grass. Vivienne calls and tells Cleo that Reed Harding changed his name to William Butler and is now an English professor at NYU. Cleo is shocked. She runs and locks Will in the bathroom.

Cleo runs outside and tells George to call the police. George refuses to, saying that he “gave his word” (290). Cleo knocks over George’s trash can to distract him and runs into his house. She finds Katrina upstairs in the bed. Because of his Alzheimer’s disease, George doesn’t realize that it has been three days since the incident.

This chapter is an excerpt from a New York Times article. It reports that Darden overlooked warnings from doctors about the side effects of Xytek in pregnant people. The plaintiff, Jules Kovacis, claims that Xytek caused her daughter to have developmental delays and other illnesses. The FBI is investigating Doug Sinclair’s death.

Katrina rehabilitates at home. She is happy that Cleo decided to stay home to help her that summer instead of going to a writing program at Middlebury. She recalls how when she hit her head and yelled, Reed ran away, and George found her. She may be disbarred for sharing Darden documents with the press, but she is happy that the FBI and FDA are investigating the company. 

Meanwhile, she has also resigned from Blair, Stevenson and is considering opening her own business. Aidan and Janine are together but unhappy. Reed was arrested and is awaiting trial. Katrina feels relieved that her past is out in the open. She has resolved to be more honest with Cleo about her life. Cleo comes in to check on her, and they hug.