Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of domestic abuse.

The narrative shifts to 23 years in the past. Simon teaches a young Lucian how to play chess at the Walton breakfast table. When Karen returns home with groceries, she sees Lucian’s bruises and mistakes them for football injuries, not realizing that they were inflicted by Lucian’s abusive father, Ansel. Sloane is currently out on a date with Jonah Bluth, a junior that Lucian dislikes because of the disrespectful way he speaks about women in the locker room. The Waltons fix one of Lucian’s favorite dinners, and later that night, Lucian’s father comes home angry and drunk. Angered by the chess book that Simon has given Lucian, Ansel beats him and leaves.

Sloane invites Lucian into her room afterward and tends to his bleeding lip. Lucian doesn’t feel comfortable going to the police because his father is friends with the Police Chief, Wylie, who allows his father to consistently get away with illegal drunk driving. Lucian makes Sloane promise never to call the police on his father. Sloane convinces him to stay and listen to three tracks of her new Shania Twain album.