Nic wakes up after having spent the evening at Tyler’s house. She watches TV, and he comes in to join her. As he sits beside her, she relaxes, while still feeling that “everything right about the night before” became “exposed in the daylight and undeniably wrong” (257). All those years ago, after the incidents at the fair, Nic drove Tyler’s truck for him. He asked her to pull over, producing “[t]wo silver bands woven together. A line of blue gems where they interlocked” (259). Nic had left soon after that, abandoning their plans, her life in Cooley Ridge. On their way out of his apartment, she tells him they have to stop seeing each other because she is destroying his life. 

After stopping by the house, she heads to the church basement, for the second day of searching for Annaleise. The crowd is much smaller today than on the first day, and she’s paired with a young man and woman whom Nic first believes to be siblings. She then realizes they are romantically involved. The trio are assigned to check along the river, and she learns that her two companions knew Annaleise. The boy looks into the river and says, “She’d think that was fitting, I bet.