The chapter begins with Primrose describing her life with the pleasant, elderly couple—Evie and Bert—who are her foster parents. They are childless, and Primrose is their first foster child. They have a cockapoo dog named Quincehead. For the first couple of weeks she lives with them, Primrose does not explain to the couple what landed her in foster care. Eventually, she decides Evie really wants to know, plus Primrose grows extremely anxious to go home. Primrose lays out the entire story of her missing parents and the series of misfortunes that brought about Miss Honeycut’s scrutiny. She describes lying on the dock, mesmerized by the motion of the waves, until she felt as one with them. To demonstrate that she knows what Primrose means, Evie tells the story of a bee sting sending her into anaphylactic shock, which resulted in her feeling that she was one with everything in the world around her. Primrose resumes her story, telling of a wave washing over her, knocking her off the pier. Her hand caught in her net, which hung on the dock. Fishermen rescued her, though she lost the tip of her left ring finger.

Primrose explains that Miss Honeycut took that opportunity to turn her case over to Child Protective Services, which removed her from Uncle Jack’s house during their investigation.