The Stillwater Girls

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness, child death, and child abuse.

As Nic watches Brant packing for a business trip, she thinks about how much she will miss spending the winter in Florida with Cate. She wants to live somewhere warm, but Brant is very attached to New York. Despite Brant’s claims that she is welcome to join him on his upcoming trip, Nic wonders if he is secretly pleased that she’s staying behind. His ride arrives, and he kisses Nic tenderly and tells her that he will miss her. As if it is something that just occurred to her at this moment, Nic tells him that there have been some strange withdrawals from her trust and she has had the account frozen while she figures out what is going on. Brant pales and departs.

Wren and Sage struggle to eat, sickened at the stranger’s slaughter of one of their beloved goats. The man resumes questioning them. Wren says that they have always lived in the cabin; she does not mention that sometimes she thinks she has vague memories of living somewhere very different. When he asks whether she has ever watched television, she recalls Mama telling her that such a thing existed long ago, when Mama was herself a child.