More time passes; by January, the town is gossiping about Lucas Cross, Kenny Stearns, and several other men who have locked themselves in a cellar to go on a drinking binge. Some of the townspeople also allude to the family history of Norman Page (a young boy who goes to school with Selena and Allison).

Norman Page lives with his overbearing mother; he has two half-sisters who are decades older than him and who hate him because their father remarried Norman’s mother. Norman lives near an eccentric elderly woman named Hester Goodale, and he is afraid of her. One day, Norman runs into Allison near Hester Goodale’s home; Allison is intrigued by the mysterious and reclusive elderly woman. She later starts to think about writing a story inspired by Hester, and “she did not know it then, but she had just taken the first step in her career” (66).

The narrative recounts how Hester Goodale is mysterious to the whole town; she is a reclusive spinster who still lives alone in the house where she grew up, and no one knows why she never married.