On Boy’s 22nd birthday, she sends the money she stole from her father back to him (circuitously, through a friend of Mia’s). At the bookstore, Mrs. Fletcher, in a roundabout way, wishes her a happy birthday, while Sidonie and Phoebe argue about Les Misérables. Phoebe finds the book to be sad, while Sidonie argues that it’s disingenuous to feel sad for French peasants, and that she should instead shed tears for the African Americans who have been, and continue to be, lynched in the South. As the girls fight, Boy wonders where Kazim is, as he usually plays peacekeeper. As he isn’t around, Mrs. Fletcher breaks the girls up instead.

While Mrs. Fletcher discusses the menu for Boy’s dinner party with her, she asks how the Whitmans are treating her. Boy takes a question about her intentions to mean that Mrs. Fletcher believes Boy is after Arturo’s money. Mrs. Fletcher, like the Whitmans, and like Boy, is not originally from Flax Hill, but after her husband died, moved to Flax Hill in order to find him, so to speak. What she found was a different version of her husband than she knew—well liked by the townspeople who remembered him, but different.