Mom bans Matthew from Zelda and his phone and assigns him to help GG sort through the boxes in her room.

Matthew finds a photo of two girls labeled Nadiya and Helen in GG's boxes; GG demands he put it away.

GG agrees to tell Matthew her story, revealing the photo's third girl was named Mila and that she has kept a terrible secret.

A starving girl named Nadiya arrives at Mila's door, claiming to be her cousin and her father Lev's niece.

Mila brings Nadiya to her piano teacher Anna's house, and Anna reluctantly agrees to shelter the starving girl.

Mila searches Papa's office and finds a hidden letter from Nadiya's mother begging Lev to save her family from starvation.

Mila arrives at Anna's house and discovers the secret police have taken both Anna and Nadiya away.

The secret police arrest Papa at night; Dasha's betrayal is revealed when Mila finds her suitcase already packed.

Mila is taken to the Collector orphanage, where the matron shaves her head and confiscates her chocolates and belongings.

Mila is shocked to discover that Nadiya is also being held at the Collector orphanage.

Mila falls ill with typhus; Nadiya nurses her but later contracts the disease herself and dies in the night.

Uncle Vanya from New York arrives at the orphanage to collect Nadiya, and Mila decides to impersonate her cousin.

Mila sails to New York with Uncle Vanya and arrives in Brooklyn to meet Helen and the rest of the family.

GG reveals to Matthew that she is actually Mila, not Nadiya, making him the first person she has ever told.

GG appears on camera in Matthew's final video and identifies herself as Mila Lomachenko; she dies the following morning.

Matthew is stuck at home during the COVID-19 lockdown and is punished for a mishap with his great-grandmother GG, leading him to sort through her mysterious boxes. Inside, he discovers a photograph that prompts GG to begin telling him the story of three cousins — Mila, Helen, and Nadiya — connected by the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s. In Kyiv, Mila shelters her starving cousin Nadiya and uncovers proof that her father has been hiding the truth about their family, but before she can act, the secret police dismantles her world entirely. Mila ends up in an orphanage where she and Nadiya are reunited, only for Nadiya to die of typhus, forcing Mila to make an unthinkable choice to survive. She assumes Nadiya's identity, sails to New York with her uncle, and lives the rest of her life under that name — until she finally tells Matthew the truth. After recording GG's story in a video documentary, Matthew watches his great-grandmother die in peace, her secret finally released.

The key events of Mila's survival and GG's secret revealed.

Matthew's mom takes away his video game controller and sends him outside while GG naps.

Matthew calls Dad for advice about GG; Dad encourages him to journal and promises to mail him a notebook.

Helen refuses to eat her cabbage at dinner, and Pop forces her to sit at the table until she finishes the whole plate.

Mila attends her weekly piano lesson with Anna, who asks her to channel a sad memory to play Tchaikovsky with feeling.

Helen is called out of class and told by her mother that Pop has had a heart attack.

Mama tells Helen that Pop constantly worries about his brother Mykola's family, who are starving in Ukraine.

Helen sews her gold cross necklace into the hem of an old nightgown and mails it to her cousins in Ukraine.

Matthew draws a family tree after realizing that GG, Helen, and Mila are all cousins through the Lomachenko brothers.

Helen argues in class against a New York Times reporter's claim that the Ukrainian famine is a lie spread by the media.

Helen begins interviewing Ukrainian neighbors about their family members' experiences of the famine, collecting their stories in a notebook.

Helen and Ruth draft a letter challenging Walter Duranty's reporting, and Helen drops it in the mail on her way home.

Mila and Nadiya climb a bell tower together, where Nadiya describes in full how the government's policies killed her entire family.

A letter from Kyiv arrives for Helen revealing that everyone in Pop's family has died except his niece Nadiya.

Pop and Helen meet with his lawyer, who informs them that Nadiya has been found at an orphanage in Kyiv.

Matthew shows Mom the video documentary he made with GG; Mom cries but thanks Matthew for preserving GG's story.

While Matthew adjusts to lockdown life and grows closer to GG, Helen Lomachenko in 1930s Brooklyn faces her own crisis when her father Pop suffers a heart attack and her mother reveals his family in Ukraine is starving. Helen channels her grief and helplessness into action, mailing her most precious possession overseas and fighting to have the Ukrainian famine recognized in the press. Mila, meanwhile, quietly tends to Nadiya at Anna's house, piecing together the truth of her family history through their growing friendship. When the evidence of tragedy reaches both Brooklyn and Kyiv simultaneously — letters confirming deaths, lawyers tracking a survivor — the cousins' fates converge across the ocean. Matthew absorbs all of this through GG's boxes and his growing conversations with her, ultimately preserving the story in a documentary that moves his mother to tears.

The secondary stories of Helen, Matthew, and Mila's hidden connections.

Matthew's red notebook arrives in the mail from Dad, and Matthew begins recording his questions and thoughts about GG's story.

Mila wanders through the Khreschatyk and witnesses dying children being removed from the Collector building for the first time.

Mila visits Nadiya repeatedly at Anna's house and begins to genuinely believe that Nadiya is truly her cousin.

Mila lies to her best friend Katya at their Motherless Daughters meeting to conceal her regular visits to Anna's house.

After class, classmate Ruth approaches Helen to validate her account of the famine and suggest they research it together.

During Easter Mass, Helen resolves to write a letter to the New York Times challenging Duranty's denial of the famine.

Pop overhears Helen arguing with Mama about whether to show him the Kyiv letter and insists on reading it himself.

A New York Times editor writes back to Helen rejecting her letter because it lacks firsthand accounts of the famine.

Matthew's dad calls to cancel their summer Paris trip; devastated, Matthew tells GG, and she silently points him to the box marked with Mila's name.

A fellow orphan named Vera remarks that Mila and Nadiya look alike, and Nadiya seizes on this to suggest they pose as sisters.

Dr. Zima informs Mila she survived typhus because she was well-nourished, but that malnourished Nadiya died in the night.

Matthew interrupts GG's account in stunned confusion and realizes that his great-grandmother is actually Mila, not the girl who died.

Katya tells Mila at the orphanage that Lev was shot by the secret police for being declared a traitor.

Mila persuades Dr. Zima to falsify the orphanage records so she is officially registered as Nadiya and Mila is listed as dead.

Matthew and Mom visit GG's grave on her real birthday, bringing chocolates and speaking to her in the cemetery.

The novel turns on a series of small but decisive moments in which each character chooses to act, discovers an uncomfortable truth, or is forced to confront a reality they had been avoiding. Matthew starts writing in the red notebook his father sends, which slowly transforms him from a passive observer into an active chronicler of his family's history. In Kyiv, Mila's sheltered worldview shatters step by step — through her visits to Nadiya, her lies to conceal them, and finally the brutal evidence of dying children in the streets. Helen, too, moves from helplessness to determination, deciding to challenge official narratives and push her family's story into the world despite rejection and resistance. The collapse of both timelines accelerates when the secret police act, Nadiya dies, and Mila must choose whether to survive by erasing herself. Matthew's final realization — that the woman who has kept him company all lockdown is Mila, not Nadiya — reframes everything he thought he understood about his family and himself.