In the present, in Portland, summer progresses. Grandma neglects her garden and neglects Rachel as she continues to drink sherry to forget the pain of Aunt Loretta’s absence. Rachel sometimes pours out her bottles or hides them, but Miss Verle supplies Grandma with replacement bottles. Rachel and Grandma live mostly emotionally separate from each other, but one day, Grandma shows Rachel her coin collection and tells her that Drew has a summer job for her at the Salvation Army. They talk about Rachel’s father. Rachel explains that back in Chicago, before the day Nella and the children died, her father had called to tell her that he was coming to bring all the children back to Germany. Rachel cannot understand why he never arrived, but Grandma tells her that he did arrive, but “[h]e just came too late that day” (183).

At the Salvation Army, on the first day of her internship, Rachel meets a blonde-haired, green-eyed boy named Jesse. Originally from New York City, Jesse is going to college in the fall, and he tells Rachel that his work at the center for the homeless helped him get into college.