Time in the cottage moves heavily and slowly, Eden and Ruth lost in each other as a leashed Margot watches them. Ruth and Eden often dance together, with Eden’s movements making Margot imagine this is how the rabbit woman would have moved in front of the cave fires. One day, there is a knock at the door, announcing the arrival of a stray.

Margot can see two women through the glass, an older woman with silver hair, and a younger one. Before Ruth welcomes them in, Eden quickly unties Margot’s bonds and hides them. The women request help to replace a blown tire in their car. Margot knows the tire must have been punctured by the nails Ruth strewed on the road. Eden brings out a toolbox and goes out with the older woman. Ruth sits next to Margot, staring at the younger woman—whom Margot thinks of as the “meaty stray” (273)—hungrily. In response to Ruth’s questions, the woman replies that she is studying to be a doctor. 

She asks Margot what she wants to do when she grows up, taking Ruth by surprise. Margot tells the woman that she doesn’t like school. Ruth laughs that Margot is “a bit slow” (273), though she has a good imagination. The woman watches Margot, sensing something odd about her situation. Margot recognizes her look of concern. However, when the older woman returns with Eden, the strays escape, leaving Margot alone.

Ruth and Eden discuss strategies to cover for Margot’s impending absence. Margot, in front of whom the conversation is taking place, suggests they tell the truth that she disappeared. Ruth thinks that is too simple; the story should be that Margot ran away from home and was hit by a car. The suggestion can be planted by leaving Margot’s bloodied clothes and body parts around the site of the “accident.”

At sunset, Ruth locks Margot in the bedroom and goes off with Eden to find a site to stage the accident. Margot scratches at the floorboards in boredom. She sees something glinting in a gap, and pulls out a sewing needle. She wonders if the needle can be used to unlock the bedroom window.

Margot works the rusted, bent needle into the lock. Though night has fallen, Eden and Ruth aren’t home yet. Margot pictures Eden finding the perfect spot. Next week, they will leave behind Margot’s things at the spot to make it look like she was a hit-and-run victim who stumbled into the woods and died in an undiscovered spot.

After a long, painful struggle, the lock finally clicks. Margot throws open the window and climbs out, falling into the garden. She decides to run into the woods, where she is bound to find a hiking stray who can rescue her. She is going to live. Margot runs till she reaches the almond-shaped rock on which she had once lain in the hope of catching a stray. She hides behind it for the night, determined to find Abbie or the bus driver when it is morning.

Margot wakes up in the early hours, leaves and bark sticking to her body. She brushes them off before she runs. Abbie’s house is not too far from the woods. She can’t wait to meet Abbie and say goodbye to her life of eating strays and living with Ruth. 

However, Margot has only run for a few minutes before she spots Ruth’s silhouette through the trees. Margot can see Ruth’s feet are protected by boots, unlike her own bare feet, slowed down by twigs and pebbles. As Ruth shouts “Little One,” Margot picks up speed. 

Ruth gains on Margot and clasps her. Even as Margot yells that she is not one of Ruth’s strays, Eden appears by Ruth’s side. The women crush Margot between them and drag her away. Eden tells Ruth to hurry as they have no more time to waste before disposing of Margot.

The women bind Margot again, Ruth telling her she has only a week left. Margot tells Ruth that she should never have become a mother, as she is evil. Ruth screams that Margot is ungrateful: Even though Ruth never wanted to carry a child, she gave birth to Margot and sacrificed her life for her. Eden hushes Ruth, telling her that every woman wants to be a mother, it is just that Ruth and Eden’s way of mothering is different. They plan to keep Margot safe in their own fashion. However, Ruth tells Margot she makes Ruth hate herself. Margot snaps back that Ruth does the same to her. 

After Ruth leaves the room, Eden asks Margot to apologize to her mother, claiming her mother’s every action is for Margot’s own good. Margot thinks that Eden is wrong. Eden may have a misguided notion of protecting Margot by consuming her, but Ruth simply wants to get rid of Margot.

Margot sits by the window, while Ruth draws her. Margot asks Ruth to tell her about love. Ruth says the first time she felt love was when she was 11 years old, and realized that she was beautiful. Margot thinks this is not love. She tells Ruth that she doesn’t love her. Ruth replies that it is not important, since many mothers and daughters do not love each other. 

Glancing at Ruth’s drawing, Margot asks Ruth if she thinks Margot is ugly, since that is how Margot appears in Ruth’s sketch. Ruth says she only draws Margot as she sees her. Margot stares at her reflection in the windowpane, seeing bits of herself, Ruth, Eden, her father, and the strays in her face. She wonders if being human means accepting that one is also pieces of other people, even those that one hurt.

The last meal Eden cooks for Margot is a rabbit pie. Margot doesn’t want to eat it, but gives in to the smell of Eden’s cooking. When Margot gobbles the food down, Ruth complains that if she eats this way, her meat will be gamey tomorrow. 

Eden gives Margot something that will make her feel warm and fuzzy. It is a letter slipped in through the postbox. The letter is in the large, painstakingly-written hand of Steve, the bus driver, hoping Margot is feeling better. Margot keeps the letter in her lap, overcome with sadness.

After the meal, Ruth and Eden withdraw to the bedroom, leaving Margot tied to the chair by the ankle bonds. In preparation for tomorrow’s grand meal, they have left a pot of stew from the last stray’s remaining bones simmering on a cauldron. Margot inches close to the cauldron and drops in the hemlock petals she has collected over weeks. The hemlock is enough to kill the women, rather than merely drug them. At night, Eden and Ruth take Margot to the bedroom, tucking her in so she has a happy sleep.

The next day, Eden is still sleeping as Ruth takes Margot to the kitchen. The fire under the cauldron has been turned off, the stock cooling. Ruth tells Margot that she is not a monster. Like all people, Ruth has light and dark within her. She did try to love Margot, but she could never feel real love or happiness with her. Eden turned out to be the love for whom Ruth had been looking all her life.

Ruth bathes Margot thoroughly, which Margot finds odd since Ruth doesn’t bathe the other strays before eating them. Eden joins them in the bathroom. Margot asks Eden if she will grow inside her and Ruth. Eden says Margot won’t grow, but stay as she is, forever. Margot knows Ruth doesn’t believe this.

Ruth and Eden prep the strays’ room and the butchering tools, Eden polishing the saws and blades with a kitchen rag. As Margot watches, they discuss and hang a hook from the ceiling. 

Eden asks Margot to make herself useful by setting the table. She reminds Margot to lay down only two plates. Ruth and Eden state they’ll be cooking Margot in a puff pastry, so their Little One “can be all nice and buttery” (307). Margot tiredly walks into the bedroom and eats as much hemlock as she can.

The moment of the kill arrives. Ruth and Eden grab Margot, stripping her and holding her down on the bedroom floor. Ruth places a wooden spoon between Margot’s teeth so Margot does not scream. Margot hopes the hemlock makes her sleep before she feels the pain from the tools. Eden kisses Margot on the forehead as she sees the glint of Ruth’s knife. As Margot is struck by pain, the world grows distant. Soon, Margot falls asleep, her heart stopping.

When Margot wakes up, it is as if from a long sleep. She can see pools of blood near her feet and smell meat and iron. She looks up and sees her carcass swaying from the iron hook in the ceiling. In the copper basin, along with her blood is her braided hair. Ruth and Eden are slumped against each other on the floor, exhausted by their task of butchering Margot. Next to them are buckets containing Margot’s organs and prime cuts from her body. The women are coated with human viscera and blood. 

As Margot’s ghost looks on, Ruth and Eden say “I love you” to each other and kiss. Margot moves past them and tries to exit the house, but she cannot.

Margot watches as Ruth dresses up for the grand meal, brushing her golden hair. Ruth says aloud that she is finally the woman she was meant to be. Eden comes in with herbs to prepare dinner and kisses Ruth. The women cook dinner together, exchanging laughs and kisses. The delicious smell makes Margot’s mouth water, though she notices how small her body parts are. She realizes that she was very much a child when she was killed.

At the candlelit dinner table, Eden and Ruth look beautiful and girlish. Ruth thanks Eden for making everything right for her. As they dig into their meal, Margot wishes for the hemlock and black mold in her body to poison the women fast. She stands by Ruth and whispers that she never tried to be a mother. Ruth flinches, but continues to eat. 

The women finish their meal and sip on wine, making plans to travel the world together. Mistaking the hemlock’s sedation for euphoria, they realize too late that they have been poisoned. Ruth and Eden gasp for air, shudder, and stop breathing.

Ruth and Eden have been dead for days, slouching in the dining chairs, their fingers barely touching. Their beauty is gone. Flies crawl out of Ruth’s lips, while the gums have started to come away from Eden’s teeth. Margot thinks they look right in their decomposing state, their inner corruption now reflected in their outer form.

Margot cannot tell how much time has passed when a man breaks in the glass of the door and unlocks it from inside. It is the bus driver, who covers his nose as the stench hits him. He calls for Margot, referring to her as “youngen.” He searches the house. Margot crouches close to him, committing his kind face and brown eyes to memory. When the man finally reaches the strays’ room and spots what is hanging from the hook, he retches and cries, calling Margot by her name.

Investigating officers sweep the house. Margot forgets the name of the bus driver, but she can see him sitting on the porch, a blanket wrapped around him. He gets up after hours, his eyes bloodshot. He moves towards his minibus, without taking a look back, and soon disappears.

Margot is alone in the homestead. Though there are no more body parts, the memory of those parts lingers. Margot knows she will linger in the homestead as a story, much like the rabbit-woman. Though Margot herself will fade with the passage of time, she draws solace from the fact that she made the homestead safe for strangers, putting its monsters to sleep.