Fox makes pancakes for Hannah and wonders what her intentions are toward him. He wonders if he is capable of becoming responsible, someone worthy of her. He burns the pancake when Hannah emerges, and he has the sense that he could really do this, be one half of a couple. He’s worried it is false hope, and yet he realizes he has already begun to think of her as his.

Hannah is impressed when she meets the band that has been setting Henry’s sea shanties to music. She is amused and hopeful to see that Fox becomes jealous when the musicians flirt with her. Hannah makes suggestions that improve the arrangements, and when Fox tells fishing stories over lunch, Hannah feels that the musicians give a new flavor to the music because of them.

Fox realizes he is in love with Hannah. He started stumbling when he met her the previous summer, but now he is well and truly a goner, “flat on his ass with canaries taking laps around his head” (263). He takes Hannah to a place called the Sound Garden, with tall steel towers designed to make sound when the wind blows through them.