Miles is summoned to Mrs. Whiting’s house—a prospect that does not put him in a good mood—where he is waylaid by Mrs. Whiting’s daughter, Cindy. Run over by a car as a child, Cindy struggles with constant pain, occasional addictions to pain medication, and crippling anxiety. She and Miles “were born on the same day in the Empire Falls hospital” (154), and Miles’s mother always encouraged the connection between them. Though one child was born rich and the other poor, their vastly different circumstances as adults proves that luck is not the exclusive province of the wealthy and that God’s mercy is both mysterious and infinite. Miles believes that Cindy’s all-consuming love for Miles—she has attempted suicide twice at his rejections—proves that “there was a God after all [...] This misery was His plan for us” (161). Cindy tries to convince him that her doctors say she is better.

He meets Mrs. Whiting out at the gazebo where her husband was rumored to have killed himself. They converse about life and how it is like a river, at least according to Mrs. Whiting. She then turns her keen and sometimes cruel observations on Miles: She senses he feels some responsibility for Cindy—which he does, encouraged as he was by his mother; she insisted he take her to prom, for example.