The Queen of Dirt Island

Standing by the pool, Doreen warns Chris to not come any closer to her. Chris, Saoirse, and her mother hang back on the path out of instinct. Doreen claims that she’s drugged Pearl but hasn’t harmed her. She says that a local woman used to help women with unwanted children dispose of them by drowning them in this pool. Chris manages to get to Doreen and grabs Pearl, but Doreen throws herself into the water. Later, Saoirse can’t stop herself from picturing Doreen going into the water and imagining what she must have been feeling at that moment. Pearl is unharmed during the encounter, but Doreen drowns, despite Chris’s best efforts to save her.

Now a widower, Chris says that he’s unable to live alone. At one point, Chris impulsively blames Saoirse’s mother for Doreen’s death, claiming it wouldn’t have happened if Eileen had accepted his marriage proposal years before. Chris boards up the farmhouse and rents an apartment in town so he can be closer to other people, upsetting Nana greatly.

After the dramatic events of the previous few weeks, Saoirse is glad when life goes back to normal again. Josh talks about bearing witness as a novelist and tells Saoirse that he feels like his destiny has been preordained since when Honey left him, he was able to conquer his feelings of inadequacy through his relationship with Saoirse.