Silas rushes to the hospital to find that while his mother has died of influenza, Maeve has fallen into a diabetic coma after miscalculating her insulin dose, most likely because she was sick with the flu and alone. Silas is shocked—he didn’t know she was diabetic. Dr. Lomas warns Silas that the longer Maeve stays unconscious, the less likely it is that she will wake up and the more likely that she has suffered brain damage. Silas writes to Christine, promising to return soon, and settles into a routine of sitting at Maeve’s bedside each morning before visiting the diner for pancakes on the doctor’s orders.

At the diner, he unexpectedly reconnects with a young woman he vaguely remembers from the old neighborhood: Marie Underwood, now Marie Knightly. She stops by the diner every morning to see her brother Irving, who works as a cook there, and if they are there at the same time, they nod and share a few words. 

The narrative switches to Marie’s perspective, as she wonders why she and Irving, who used to be so close, have grown so far apart. He lived with her and Rupert for a time, and when he moved out, Rupert blamed her, saying that her “nagging” caused him to leave. She details other ways in which Rupert extended his control over Marie—dictating her clothing and weight, monitoring her calls, isolating her from friends, and punishing her (at one point forcing her to sleep on the bathroom floor because she took too long to answer the phone when he called). She doesn’t understand how her life has become what it is.

The next morning, Fiona returns from a walk to find that several glass tumblers she had left drying on the kitchen counter are now shattered on the floor. Unable to find a rational explanation, she is reminded of the rumors that the house is haunted and leaves to run errands as an excuse to get out. Later, while cleaning the kitchen, she sorts through a drawer of Tad’s old papers. She finds an invoice for electrical work together with a returned cheque showing Tad had double-paid it himself—notable because Mum normally handled all his bills, suggesting he hid the work from her. She also finds a decades-old newspaper clipping about the murder of a woman named Gertie Lentfer, which names her missing husband Julian as a suspect. 

That evening, while cleaning an upstairs bathroom, Fiona feels a strange, compelling urge to look behind the vanity. She dislodges an object from the gap and discovers a heavy silver ring set with nine diamonds in a daisy shape. She immediately recognizes it from a description of Marie’s wedding ring in The Midnight Estate. Confused, Fiona theorizes that the book’s author, Charity Wilkie, might have once stayed at Wurimbirra and lost the ring.

Weeks pass with no change in Maeve’s condition. While cleaning out his late mother’s apartment, Silas is flooded with repressed memories of his abusive father, Frank. This experience makes him realize that the fearful look in Marie’s eyes is the same one his mother used to have. He speaks to Carmen, the diner owner, who confirms his fears: Marie’s husband, Rupert, is a corrupt police deputy who extorts local businesses. 

A flashback reveals the extent of Rupert’s coercive control in the small town. He systematically isolated Marie, dictating her appearance, monitoring her calls, and alienating her from friends. When Marie attempted to leave, her friend Donna refused to help: Rupert had pulled Donna over and told her Marie was having mental health issues, and Donna’s husband was frightened by Rupert’s criminal reputation, leaving her unwilling to get involved. Rupert later implies to Marie that he murdered a previous wife for trying to leave him. 

Marie discovers she is pregnant and feels utterly trapped. She then accidentally locks herself out of her house, and Rupert orders her to wait for him in the backyard in the pouring rain until he gets home as punishment. Silas, having come to drop off a promised copy of Brave New World and to check on her, finds her there, drenched and sobbing in a downpour. Terrified, Marie begs him to leave before Rupert arrives. Silas seeks help from her elderly neighbor, Mr. Peterson, who remembers Silas and the fact that he moved to a “small town way out in the middle of nowhere with the kangaroos[…] [with] the same name as the magazine” (125). Peterson is oblivious to Marie’s situation and dismisses Silas’s concerns.

Fiona is shocked to find the reference to a “small town way out in the middle of nowhere with the kangaroos[…] [with] the same name as the magazine” (125). She knows it must be referring to Forbes. She texts Jon, but he has never heard of the author, Charity Wilkie, and an internet search reveals nothing. 

That night, another unexplained event occurs: Fiona hears a noise and finds a bucket and cleaning cloth have moved across the parlor on their own. Now genuinely scared, she searches the house armed with a vacuum cleaner wand but finds no one. 

The next day, she goes to Tad’s storeroom to look for letters between him and Wilkie, as he corresponded with several authors, but she is overwhelmed by the vast, meticulously organized archive of her uncle’s correspondence. Deciding she needs help, Fiona visits her mother Ginny, who was in charge of, among other things, maintaining and organizing Tad’s archive and correspondence. Ginny says she has not set foot in Wurimbirra since Tad’s wake, and even then, she was “uncomfortable.” She gives Fiona a cryptic warning not to make changes or “go digging around” (144), insisting that the house holds dangerous secrets, and Tad’s wish for it to remain untouched was meant to protect Fiona. She also challenges Jon’s account of the argument between her and Tad, saying he does not know what he truly heard. 

Their tense conversation is interrupted by Erin, a young backpacker who is staying on the farm with her boyfriend Vince, who is helping out. Ginny dismisses Fiona, who leaves deeply unsettled.

Worried about Marie’s situation, Silas sits at Maeve’s bedside and tells her everything; she has been in the coma for a month now. A few days later, he meets Marie at the diner, and they sit back-to-back in adjoining booths so they can speak privately. He asks if her husband, Rupert, hits her. She says no but describes a pattern of coercive control: He checks her car’s odometer, monitors her calls, and dictates what she wears and who she sees. Marie admits she is terrified, explaining that while Rupert has never left a bruise, he has grabbed her wrist, squeezed her shoulder, and been sexually coercive. She feels she cannot confide in Irving, who seems to look up to Rupert and is only 17 years old. Silas advises Marie to talk to her brother for help, explaining that he must soon return to Australia. Marie agrees to speak to Irving the next day.

The next morning, Marie goes to the diner to speak to Irving. He is distant at first, but then senses her distress. She tries to explain to him about her problem with Rupert, but when he asks if Rupert hits her and she says no, he dismisses her. He tells her she needs to talk to her husband and refuses to help, telling her that she is being manipulative and needs to go home.

That same morning, just as Silas is about to go for his morning walk, he gets a call from Maeve’s doctor that she died during the night. He visits her for the last time at the hospital. He decides to deal with his mother and Maeve’s belongings and then return to Australia to try to save his marriage to Christine.

Marie nervously waits to see if Irving told Rupert about their talk, but four days go by, and nothing happens, so she begins to relax. On the fourth day, however, Rupert comes home unexpectedly during the day. He reveals that Irving told him she planned to leave, and then he hits her for the first time. Later, as Marie is nursing her black eye, she wonders if Irving would help her now that the abuse is so obvious.