The following afternoon, Jack asks Calisa to heat soup for lunch. He shares that he was homeschooled, recently earned his GED, and wants to work at the inn permanently. Calisa opens up about her anxieties regarding college and her recent breakup, admitting that she had lost her sense of self. Jack asks who she wants to be, and Calisa realizes that she needs to stay at the inn longer than three days in order to discover this about herself. Jack offers to vouch for her but warns that Auntie Zee rarely listens to anyone.

The next morning, Zee declares that it’s Calisa’s third and final day. When Jack enters with his family’s tattered cookbook, Calisa defends him and confronts Zee about her unforgiving nature, connecting it to the family feud with her mother Mom-Kate and the inn’s decline. Kendra interrupts to request tea and cake. Zee reluctantly agrees that Calisa will bake a cake the following day. Kendra privately thanks Calisa for rehousing her lizard and cryptically states it will serve her well once it matures. When Zee demands to know what they did, they take her to the greenhouse, where she approves of their solution and instructs them to let the lizard come and go freely.

Instead of immediately baking the promised cake, Calisa decides to first restore the inn’s overgrown gardens. While she and Jack are clearing vines from the front porch, a young woman with bright green hair named Melidor rushes out, shouting that they’re hurting the plants. Calisa notices that the nearby stone statue’s hands, previously clasped, are now reaching out as if to stop her. Jack steps protectively between Calisa and the upset guest. Calisa explains that they’re saving the bushes from being choked by vines, and the lizard—now named Steve—breaks the tension by waddling over and hissing at Melidor. Melidor apologizes, explains that nightmares about her responsibilities drove her outside, and begins helping. She then suddenly grabs a vine and runs into the forest with it. Jack gently suggests that Calisa could return home if the inn is too strange, but Calisa has a sudden intuition that he’s scared of something. While staring at the stone statue, her resolve to stay hardens.

Calisa decides that she needs answers from Auntie Zee. After showering, she hears strange whispers coming from room 12 on the third floor and, breaking Zee’s rules, retrieves the master skeleton key and unlocks the door.

Inside the empty room, she finds a swirling, iridescent portal in the open closet. She tests it with a flower and her hand and then jumps through when she hears footsteps on the stairs. She emerges into an alien landscape with a purple sun, where a woman with green skin identifies herself as Melidor’s mother and gives Calisa a stern message for her daughter about not running from her duties. Overwhelmed, Calisa returns through the portal.

She then uses the master key to open unoccupied room 11 and finds a second portal, this one black and gold, opening onto a torch-lit market at night with many other portal doorways visible on the surrounding hills. Stepping back into the inn, she concludes that the inn’s guests are travelers from other worlds who arrive through the closet portals.

Calisa calls home and speaks with Mom-Elise, whose careful response and advice to open a few doors—both metaphorically and literally—confirms that her mothers know the inn’s secret.

In the kitchen, Calisa begins baking the promised cake. When Jack enters, she directly asks if the guests are from other worlds. Jack attempts to lie, but Calisa confronts him. He pleads with her not to press the issue, explaining that the inn is his home and that he can’t afford to lose it. When she argues that it’s safer for everyone if he tells her the truth, he relents. He confirms that certain doors in the inn are portals to other places—specifically pocket dimensions, not other planets—and that Auntie Zee controls which doors function as portals.

While the cake cools, Calisa and Jack notice that the stone statue has moved to just outside the kitchen window. Jack begs Calisa not to confront Auntie Zee about the portals, promising to answer her questions himself. Calisa agrees on the condition that he tells her everything without lying. When Zee enters, they quickly improvise a cover story to hide what they were actually discussing.

After Zee and Jack leave to fix a light, Calisa goes outside to question the statue directly, devising a system where it answers yes-or-no questions by moving its head while her back is turned. The statue communicates that it doesn’t need help, isn’t from this world, and is at the inn willingly. When Jack returns, he warns Calisa that going through portals without Zee’s permission is dangerous. He then reveals the full truth about his father, Thomas: Three years ago, Thomas went through a portal searching for something to fix the inn’s broken portals and never returned because that portal stopped working. Calisa finally understands why the inn has fallen into such severe neglect.