Once again, Kingsolver shifts points of view to limited third person. She also shifts the setting to Lou Ann's house in Tucson, Arizona. Lou Ann now has a baby boy named Dwayne Ray. Her mother (Ivy Logan) and grandmother (Granny Logan), both from Kentucky, are visiting to help Lou Ann with the new baby. Lou Ann asked Angel to move back into the house during the women's visit because she doesn't want to admit to her relatives that her marriage is over. Because Angel "[knows] the power of mothers and grandmothers," he does what she asks and they pretend to be a united family. Lou Ann doesn't like lying to her mother and grandmother, but she just can't reveal the truth about her failed marriage. Unfortunately, she is more worried about what others think and feel about her than she is about what she wants for herself. Rather than face conflict, she glosses over the problem by asking Angel to return home temporarily to further the appearance of a happy, picture-perfect marriage.
Throughout their two-week stay, Lou Ann's mother and grandmother do their best to avoid Angel. They help Lou Ann with the baby, and Granny Logan manages to complain about everything — from the Tucson heat to Lou Ann's moving far away from home and marrying a "heathern" Mexican who commits the sin of working on Sundays. She even insists on wearing her winter coat to the bus in eighty-degree heat simply because it's January — at home in Kentucky, it's cold. In describing Granny Logan, Kingsolver uses imagery similar to that found in poetry: "Her old hand pawed the air for a few seconds before Ivy silently caught it and corralled it in the heavy black sleeve."
