Content Warning: This section contains an incident of sexual assault.

Cash cannot shake his grief. He realizes that anything he does for the rest of his life will be diminished because he cannot share it with his Papaw. He even abandons words, for they cannot articulate this overwhelming sense of absence.

In the cafeteria, Delaney shares a memory of Papaw with Cash about the two of them sitting at a McDonald’s for hours after Middleford contacted her and she was so conflicted. “I miss him” (346), she admits.

With Alex, Cash asks the big questions: What happens after we die? Is there some reason God likes to make us suffer like this? Is Papaw’s spirit here still? Alex assures Cash he will come to feel God’s abiding presence.