Grazina suddenly remembers that she has an electric scooter, and Hai drags it out from the corner of the screen porch, wipes it down, and takes her for a ride on it.

The next day at work, a customer yells at one of their regulars, a woman named Cookie, who occasionally comes in just for a cup of water, claiming she smells bad; however, the HomeMarket crew refuses to turn her out. Later that day, they discover her unconscious in the bathroom, having overdosed on drugs laced with fentanyl. The fire department arrives in time and manages to revive and take her away, but everyone at HomeMarket is visibly shaken.

Hai steps out for air, and Sony finds and informs him that he spotted Hai’s mother at their local pharmacy. Hai begs Sony not to tell her anything about him as he has lied to her about being in Boston; Sony agrees.

Back at home, Grazina senses that Hai has had a bad day at work. Hai asks her about what happened to her brother, but she deflects the question and brings out a cake she has made for him since it’s November 15, Hai’s birthday. Hai thanks Grazina and hugs her in gratitude.

HomeMarket is inundated with business during Thanksgiving, and they run out of corn bread by noon. As Hai rushes to bake more, Maureen confides in him that BJ mixes cake mix in with the corn bread batter—this is the secret behind its taste. Maureen asserts that it’s so good because it’s a lie, which is true for a lot of things. The HomeMarket crew works nonstop through the day, and are heartened and filled with pride when an elderly customer thanks them for saving people from eating alone on Thanksgiving.

The next day, Hai helps Grazina trim her hair after she accidentally burns it while trying to curl it. Afterwards, he picks up Sony, whom Grazina has invited over for Thanksgiving. Grazina cooks cabbages, which she claims her son Lucas dropped off for her; Hai, having heard Grazina mention him recently from time to time, plays along. Hai reheats some Salisbury steaks, Grazina’s favorite meal, and Sony tells them how they were invented by a doctor named James Salisbury during the Civil War. In turn, Grazina claims that her father invented fruit salad.

Defeated, Sony confides in Hai and Grazina that his mother won’t be getting out of prison. Grazina consoles him, and Hai claims he would have helped if he had known; Sony points out how Hai has never helped in the past.

After dinner, the three of them watch Gettysburg together. Grazina falls asleep during, and Sony muses about how the South always loses the war, comparing the Civil War to the war in Vietnam. Hai slips away to call his mother, lying that he is doing well and making money. As he comes back to settle down for the night, he hears Sony say, “Why do I feel so terribly sad?” (155). Hai pretends to be asleep, hoping that his cousin, too, will fall asleep soon.

Hai remembers a road trip in 2001 with his grandmother, Bà ngoại, Aunt Kim, his mother, Sony, and himself. Aunt Kim was scoping out a nail salon to purchase in Florida, but Sony convinced her to make a detour along the way. Sony leads them to the Stonewall Jackson Historical House and Museum. Sony is rapt with attention throughout the tour, while Hai is largely bored. Midway through the tour, Bà ngoại, who needs to use the toilet, asks the horrified boys to stand guard as she urinates into one of the earthenware pots on display. After the tour, Sony proclaims that Stonewall Jackson was a military genius, just like his own father. The family eats chicken nuggets in a nearby McDonald’s parking lot, and Bà ngoại wishes Sony a happy birthday.

At this point in the memory, Hai wakes up and sees Sony, still asleep next to him, on Thanksgiving Day. Hai whispers “Happy Birthday” to his cousin.

Grazina’s episodes become more frequent, with the effect of her usual medicines fading faster than their six-hour window. During one such episode. Grazina and Hai find a beige cloth covered with drawings. Grazina revealed she used to draw on the sheets at night to keep the nightmares at bay.

Pointing out the drawing of a house, Grazina tells Hai it belonged to her friend, “Marta the owl-girl” (170). Marta only learned to swim when she was 16; a local miner’s son, four years older than her, taught her how. When he was 21, he enrolled in the army; however, shortly before he was due to leave, he and Marta were out swimming, and he drowned while Marta survived.

Grazina also finds an envelope with $100 bills amounting to over four grand, which she gives “Sergeant Pepper” as payment for passage to London. When she briefly comes back to reality and spots the envelope, Hai lies and tells her that it contains his pay stubs for tax purposes.

After work one day, Russia notices Hai’s army-style boots and compliments them. He remembers meeting a man named Rob at his cousin’s place who used to be in the army and was “addicted to war” (175), wearing the same boots. Rob also abused drugs heavily when he was back home, and Hai and Russia discuss Russia’s sister, Anna, who is in rehab herself in New Hampshire. Hai keeps his stint in rehab a secret from Russia.

One afternoon, when Grazina is napping, Hai finds more pills in the house and pockets them. Hai remembers the day he left rehab; it was pouring that morning, and the nurse who saw him off sent him away with a prayer and a reminder that there was no shame in returning if he needed to. Hai then walked back to East Gladness to Randy’s house, the man from whom Hai and his friends had been buying candy and drugs since they were in middle school. After buying pills from Randy, Hai headed to the park, trying to clear his head and figure out what to do. He then made his way to his mother’s place but stopped when he spotted her through the living room window, looking healthier and more content than he had ever seen her.

Hai remembered the time he returned home from New York: He couldn’t tell his mother that he was quitting because Noah had died of a drug overdose; all he could tell her was that things had gotten too hard for him to continue. Hai’s mother had been appalled both by his failure and the thousands of dollars they now owed the college because Hai had defaulted on his scholarship. They had fought bitterly, with Hai accusing his mother of being a failure herself despite having had twenty years to make more of herself.

Unable to disappoint her a second time, Hai turned away from his mother’s house and attempted to leave town over King Phillip’s Bridge, which eventually brought him here to Grazina’s house.

Close to Christmas, Wayne enlists Maureen, Russia, and Hai to help him pack meat at a warehouse where he sometimes works to help him earn a bonus. When they arrive at the place Wayne directed them to, however, they are appalled to discover that it is a slaughterhouse.

Despite their horror, and Maureen throwing up in between, the three of them follow through on their promise to Wayne and spend the day killing the pigs at the slaughterhouse. Wayne shows them how to shoot them dead with a bolt gun. Hai’s mother calls and tells her that he is dissecting pigs for medical school. Hai confides in Wayne that he is lying to his mother; Wayne reveals that he is a father himself to a teenage son, and can tell when someone is lying. However, he deflects Hai’s question about whether he will see his son over the holidays, and shows him pictures of his dogs instead, asserting that it’s “Not good looking at what you can’t have” (205).

The crew takes a lunch break, and Wayne tells them about how Berkshire in England used to have some of the best pork in the world. They presented their pigs to the emperor of Japan to win him over, and the emperor was so impressed with the quality of meat, he let the English and Christianity into his country. This is how the pigs got termed “emperor hogs.” Eventually, the crew heads home. Wayne doesn’t end up getting the bonus as promised, as the butchers don’t make their quota; however, out of pity and guilt, Wayne slips each of them $50 over the next few weeks anyway.

After visiting the Stonewall Jackson museum, Sony and Hai rode around on the push scooter in the McDonald’s parking lot. Hai pretended they were on a spaceship, but Sony refused to join in, asserting that “make-believe […] makes things wobbly” (211). Sony likened his father to Stonewall Jackson, claiming he was a corporal with an injury in his wrist from the Vietcong as a souvenir from the war.

In the present day, Hai waits for Sony in the waiting room of a psychiatrist’s office. When Sony and the psychiatrist emerge, the psychiatrist hands Hai a pamphlet on neuroatypicality and instructs him on the medications Sony will be taking. Hai reassures Sony, who is anxious about taking the medication, even as he wonders why Sony never told him this is why Sony lives in a group home—Hai had assumed Sony was seeing a therapist for “sadness.” Hai and Sony ride back home on a bike together, chanting, “This is not a spaceship!” (216).