At supper, Urania notices how different her Aunt Adelina appears: “bent, almost bald […] her face puckered into a thousand wrinkles, dentures that shift when she eats or speaks” (192). Urania sees her niece Marianita, whom she has never met, watching her carefully, and she wonders what her niece has heard. Urania’s aunt and cousins reinforce the belief that Urania’s father recognizes her and feels happy to see her, even if Urania cannot tell. Lucinda complains that the family’s fortunes began to change when Trujillo died, but Adelina says that their troubles started earlier, with the letter in “The Public Forum” denouncing Agustín.

The narrative begins shifting between the present and the time of the letter’s publication. Agustín’s brother-in-law originally informed him of the letter via telephone and assured him it was probably just a mistake. Agustín suspected the letter was a trap of some kind, though he, too, was not unnerved by its appearance, as “it was the first time he had appeared in the infernal column” (193). The letter—signed by a Telésforo Hidalgo Saíno, but certainly written by a high-ranking government official, if not Trujillo himself—accused Agustín of corruption during his time as the Minister of Public Works.