Content Warning: This section of the book and this guide includes references to police brutality, institutionalized racism, and human trafficking.

The bookstore is doing well during the pandemic, filling individual and school orders. Spring softens the pandemic’s impact. People can walk outside again in the sunny air, avoiding one another in the now-snowless streets and parks. Hetta unexpectedly approaches Tookie to apologize for her behavior and confesses to taking a role in a pornographic film called Midnight Cowgirl. Hetta confirms that Laurent is the father of her child but says that because she finds him flighty, she worries about allowing Jarvis to form an attachment to him. Hetta and Laurent have an open relationship and she knows about him dating Asema, though Asema doesn’t know about Jarvis.

Tookie gathers some of the things Flora gave her over the years to burn, hoping to free Flora’s spirit that way, and she wonders why Flora was so nice to her and told Kateri that they were best friends. When Tookie asks Pollux why he doesn’t believe in ghosts, he assures her that he believes in spirits. Tookie is shocked because the reason she kept her haunting a secret from him is that she was sure he considered ghosts nonsense.