On Sunday morning at Leda’s, the two sisters discuss the story of Whistler the horse. Daphne questions her own memory and suggests that Mary Carter’s reported visions of the dead may have been hallucinations caused by fever and dehydration. Leda offers another interpretation, suggesting that Mary may have come to regard the experience as personal. Both agree on one fact—Whistler was real and returned to Mary.

Back at her Bronxville home, Daphne finds four missed calls from Jonathan, who’s in Wisconsin. The discovery of potentially valuable belongings has made the process of cleaning out his mother’s house more complicated. He’s pleased to hear that Daphne has contacted Eddie. After hanging up, Daphne calls her mother and proposes a visit. Abigail hedges, but when Daphne mentions running into Eddie at the Met, Abigail responds with surprising warmth—recalling his love of art and museums, his devotion to Daphne as a child, and his guilt over the scar that the car accident left on Daphne’s face. Surprised by her mother’s nostalgia, Daphne asks her to help her understand what happened between her and Eddie. Abigail agrees to see her the next day. Daphne informs Leda, who asks her to call the moment she leaves Abigail’s house.

The next day, Daphne takes the Acela train to Winchester. Abigail picks her up at the station but steers them away from the house to avoid discussing Eddie in front of Lucas. Daphne suggests that they drive to the raspberry farm—the site of the old accident—a place Abigail has never visited. Abigail agrees. During the drive, Abigail admits that she told Lucas only that the marriage to Eddie ended over a disagreement about city versus suburban living. When Daphne mentions attending the Hotallings’ anniversary party with Eddie, Abigail becomes visibly angry—a reaction that Daphne prefers to her mother’s earlier breeziness. Abigail then pulls over and switches places with Daphne, saying it’s too dangerous to drive and have this conversation at the same time.

Abigail then gives Daphne her account of the marriage and divorce. At Houghton Mifflin in the late 1970s, she and Eddie were close friends who provided each other with companionship and support: She was a divorced mother in a social world hostile to single women, and he was a gay man in a social world where he couldn’t live openly. She had misread the animosity that Skip directed at Eddie as jealousy over Polly, assuming that Eddie was having an affair with Skip’s wife. One night, the four of them had dinner together; Skip drank heavily and publicly belittled Eddie’s career and his failure to have served in Vietnam. Afterward, on a walk, Abigail made Eddie a direct offer: her love, her daughters’ love, and a shared life, in exchange for ending his relationship with Skip and not seeing men. Eddie made these promises, and she believed she could change him.

They arrive at the raspberry farm’s gravel lot. Abigail reveals that she has told this story only once before—to her youngest son, Matthew, after he came out as gay during his freshman year of college. Daphne thinks about how her mother once blamed her for the divorce but doesn’t mention it. Abigail describes the aftermath of the accident: Leda was hospitalized with complications, Eddie with a crushed ankle. Daphne shares that Eddie once predicted that Abigail would be too relieved they were alive to be upset about the car. The comment makes Abigail smile. Then, she describes what happened after the accident: She returned to Eddie’s hospital room sooner than expected, ignored the sign on the door, and found Skip seated beside Eddie’s bed with his head against Eddie’s chest, crying. Eddie had his hand on Skip’s hair. In that moment, she understood that Eddie was still in love with Skip. She wanted Eddie gone, but she also wanted him to love her. Daphne takes Abigail’s hand and is reminded that her mother has her own experiences of love and loss.

Back at the house, Daphne briefly encounters Lucas, who’s complaining about weeds in the garden. She picks up one of his books about positivity and reads him a passage she agrees with, urging him to focus on what he has rather than what he lacks. He responds by asking her to get the books into her school’s curriculum. After he leaves, Daphne reflects that it’s her mother’s financial intelligence, not Lucas’s philosophy, that has sustained their life in Winchester. She also thinks that Abigail would trade all of it to have Eddie back simply as a friend.

The next morning, Daphne takes the train home. Her thoughts turn to her father, Buddy, and she reflects on similarities between his story and Eddie’s, believing that Abigail had asked both men to give up something important to them. Daphne resolves to be more attentive to students going through their parents’ divorces.

On the train, Eddie texts asking her to lunch. She agrees to meet him at his Random House office, where he introduces her to his colleagues. At his desk, he hands her a small, framed photograph of Whistler.

At Café Luxembourg, over omelets, Daphne recounts her conversation with Abigail. Eddie acknowledges that he broke both promises he made to her. He describes his current connection with Skip as familiar and habitual—centered on taxes, crossword puzzles, and the occasional film—rather than a romantic relationship, and he believes that Polly probably doesn’t ask questions. He also admits to having been in love with three other people besides Skip, and he says that he did love Abigail, though differently from romantic love. The conversation turns to Daphne’s own past: She tells him about her college boyfriend, who left her for another student during a semester abroad. Eddie contrasts her ability to speak openly about that relationship with his own years of secrecy. He invites Daphne to brunch at the Hotallings’ house in Darien that Saturday and asks why she never had children. Daphne tells him that her own unhappy childhood made her reluctant to repeat it and that being a stepmother to Jonathan’s daughters was sufficient. She thinks about her relationship with Sydney and Rachel Fuller, daughters of Jonathan’s first wife, Candy. The early years were rocky—Daphne was too young, and the girls resented the speed of events—but things eventually improved after a kitchen conversation with Rachel and, crucially, after Leda began visiting for evenings with both sets of sisters.

That evening, Daphne calls Eddie to accept the invitation to brunch and sets the Whistler photograph on her dresser. During the week, Abigail calls multiple times with memories of Eddie, including the discovery that she still has a red leather dictionary that his parents inscribed to him as a high school graduation gift; she asks Daphne to return it. Daphne suggests that Abigail send it herself.

On Friday, Jonathan surprises Daphne by flying home from Wisconsin early. He gives her a small painted metal horse from his childhood—he painted it himself and felt, without quite knowing why, that it was meant for her. That evening, Daphne tells Jonathan everything about Eddie, her mother, and the Hotallings. He insists on accompanying her to the brunch.

On Saturday, they drive north to Darien. At the Hotallings’ house, Skip, a retired senior partner, quickly establishes common professional ground with Jonathan. Over the meal, the conversation covers retirement and Skip’s criticisms of younger workers; Skip also belittles Eddie’s career in front of the group. When the subject of Daphne’s father comes up, Eddie warmly recalls Buddy visiting him in the hospital after the accident, bringing him newspapers, magazines, and a copy of Peter Matthiessen’s Men’s Lives—the same book Buddy later gave to Daphne at her high school graduation.

After lunch, Skip attempts to take the men out on his restored Chris-Craft, but Jonathan stays behind with Daphne and Polly while Skip and Eddie go out on the boat. In the kitchen, Polly becomes emotional. She reveals that she arranged the entire brunch because she feared that Daphne’s sudden reappearance meant that Eddie’s leukemia had worsened. Jonathan tells her that Eddie’s condition is stable and well managed. After Polly leaves to collect herself, Jonathan explains that Eddie’s illness appears to be a slower-progressing form of leukemia.

In the car on the way home, Jonathan relays Polly’s concerns to Eddie, who’s surprised that she’s still worried. He was diagnosed roughly eight years ago, considers it manageable, and has had only two flare-ups, each resolved quickly. They bring Eddie back to their house in Bronxville before his train. There, Eddie notices Candy’s rabbit paintings and asks for a tour. Jonathan leads them through the collection, explaining that Candy assembled it herself and kept it deliberately small. In the master bedroom, they stop to look at a rabbit painting that Candy made herself. Afterward, Eddie sits on the bed, asks for a glass of water, and accepts Jonathan’s invitation to rest in the guest room. Before standing, he notices the small painted metal horse on Daphne’s nightstand, picks it up, and recognizes it as Whistler.