Emma’s fever breaks overnight, and Ali wakes to Dulcie feeding her pancakes. She chooses not to tell them about Sissy being in her room to avoid spoiling the improved mood. While Emma is coloring in the other room—using dark scribbles of blue, purple, and black—Dulcie tells Ali of her plan to see a lawyer to talk about Teresa’s disappearance.

At the same time Dulcie is meeting with the lawyer, Ali and Emma enjoy a sunny day in town eating ice cream by the boardwalk. They see a man throwing a frisbee by the water with his dog and teenagers playing volleyball, and Ali thinks that “it seemed everyone was happy but us” (151). At lunch, Dulcie tells Ali the lawyer advised it would be best to just forget about it all because it was an accidental drowning and the sisters are not legally responsible. Knowing it is impossible to forget, she decides to meet with a journalist at the newspaper, The Sentinel, that afternoon to tell her story. Ali and Emma pass the time happily at the carousel.

Dulcie returns from the newspaper meeting in a foul mood after being treated roughly there. Regardless, the paper will interview the police and others in the town, and a photographer will come in a few days to take photos and talk to them.