Oliver convinces his sisters to bypass the hospital rules. They get on an elevator with a group of adults and reach the sixth floor undetected. After briefly following another family, they find themselves at the nurses’ station. Three nurses—one unamused, one concerned, and one pleasant—stop them. The children explain they are family friends of Mr. Jeet and have brought pastries.

The pleasant nurse gently tells them Mr. Jeet cannot have visitors but promises to let him and Miss Josie know they came. Laney offers her the entire box of pastries to take good care of Mr. Jeet. As the children leave, they get lost in the hallways. Hyacinth then spots a room with a sign reading “JEET.”

They peek inside and are shocked by what they see. Mr. Jeet lies motionless in bed, surrounded by beeping medical equipment. Their mother and Miss Josie sit beside him, looking overwhelmed with grief. The sight deeply upsets the children. They quietly retreat, find the elevators, retrieve their purchases, and walk home in stunned silence.

At dinner, Mama is too distracted to ask about their day. When Mr. Beiderman brings down tins of SPAM to share, Mama confiscates them and sends Papa to clear out his entire supply, citing health concerns.

The family eats a healthy meal of chicken and salad. When Hyacinth asks about Mr. Jeet, Mama admits that there are complications and his hospital stay will be longer than expected, though she insists he is not dying. Later, unable to sleep, Jessie heads for the roof. Her siblings join her.

As they climb up the fire escape, they pass Mr. Jeet and Miss Josie’s dark apartment. Hyacinth worries that Miss Josie’s plants are sad, and when they look through the window, they see that her seedlings are drooping. The children climb through the window to water them. Jessie calls their older sister, Isa, who is away at music camp, and has her play the violin over the speakerphone, remembering that Miss Josie believed music helps plants grow.

The next morning, the children begin clearing trash and weeds from the abandoned lot. While working, they are forced to hide when they hear Mr. Huxley’s footsteps outside the fence. They hear the click of a camera and the rustling of ivy, and they wonder why he is interested in the property.

After several hours, they take a break for lunch. As they leave the lot, Herman rides by on his new bike. He questions them about what they were doing, and when Oliver is evasive, Herman dismissively calls the lot a “toxic waste dump” (106). The comment upsets Hyacinth and leaves Oliver feeling doubtful about their project.

At home, their mother fusses over their scratches and sunburns, and they tell her they’ve been at the park. At lunch, she evades their questions about Mr. Jeet’s condition, and Jessie observes that Mama is skilled at changing the subject during uncomfortable conversations.

After lunch, Hyacinth sits outside the garden gate to knit while the others are working inside. Herman finds her there and reveals that he also knits. They bond over their shared hobby, and Herman suggests they do “yarn bombing”—a form of knitted graffiti—to decorate a nearby street sign post. Hyacinth realizes that Herman can be kind.

Later, Hyacinth and Laney visit Mr. Beiderman. They discover he has a new stash of SPAM hidden in his apartment. When they ask about Luciana, he shares a memory of her playing the violin for her plants. The girls invite him to shop for plants with them, but he declines. Hyacinth comforts him, and they sit together quietly on his couch. After what happened to Mr. Jeet, Hyacinth feels she now understands his long-held grief.

Oliver is still upset and guilty about Mr. Jeet, and he misses hearing the upstairs neighbors. He leaves dinner and retreats to his treehouse. His friend Angie soon joins him, bringing junk food as a break from his mother’s new health regimen. Oliver confides in her about the secret garden project, their lack of money for plants, and his fears for Mr. Jeet. 

To help raise money, Angie suggests a sidewalk sale, and they plan one for the next morning. Later that night, Jessie again goes to the fire escape to clear her head. As she climbs past the Jeets’ apartment, the window slides open, and someone yells, “Stop, thief!”. Jessie slips, but a hand grabs her arm and pulls her to safety inside the apartment.

The person who saved Jessie is Orlando, Mr. Jeet’s grandnephew, whom she remembers from his summer visit three years ago. Orlando explains that his family has moved to Harlem permanently, and he was dropping off groceries for his aunt and uncle. He is a skilled gardener, and he has already watered and thinned Miss Josie’s ailing seedlings, which now look much healthier.

Jessie invites Orlando to the roof. Though he is afraid of heights, he follows her up the fire escape. Orlando is impressed by the view and by a Rube Goldberg machine Jessie built. He shares that he misses the wide, starry skies of his former home in Georgia. After exchanging phone numbers and promising to meet the next day, Orlando returns to the Jeets’ apartment.

The next morning, the Vanderbeeker children and their friend Angie go through their possessions and hold a sidewalk sale to raise money for the garden. Business is slow, and their first visitor, the mail carrier Mr. Jones, receives several bags of pet treats for free from a generous Hyacinth. Oliver worries that they won’t make money that way.

Angie suggests they try selling door-to-door in her large apartment building. She and Oliver take a box of items and successfully make a few sales on the fifth floor. However, their enterprise is cut short when a resident emerges from her apartment and accuses them of being “hooligans.” She chases them away with her walking stick, hitting Oliver on the leg.

After escaping to the building’s courtyard, they collapse in laughter. As they recover, Angie notices a large pile of bagged garden soil stacked on pallets in a corner of the courtyard.