Summary

The novel moves ahead to late June. Damian and Stephanie have continued to grow more distant, and divorce seems to be a more prominent possibility for them. On the day of the sudden, unexpected death of famous performer Michael Jackson, Damian is quite shocked by the news. This news causes Damian’s grief for his father to resurface afresh. Damian, suddenly struck by the urge to write, decides not to go to work, and instead he stays home and begins a new writing project. The narrative then shifts focus to Melissa, whose anxieties about the house continue to deepen She finds lines drawn on some of the walls, and Ria says that she did not draw them.

The week after Michael Jackson’s death, Ria loses her main source of freelance work, and she is rejected from a different job to which she applied...