At Parambil in 1951, the family mounts an urgent search when Elsie goes missing. Shamuel checks the stream and canal, Joppan canvasses roads and wells by torchlight, and others scour the riverbank. Through the night, relatives gather on the verandah, anxious and exhausted, while Baby Mol remains oddly untroubled.

At dawn, Georgie travels to Elsie’s family home and learns she is not there; her brother, drunk and hostile toward Philipose, confirms she isn’t at the estate. The formal search pauses, but Shamuel continues alone. After twenty-four hours, he returns with Elsie’s neatly folded thorthu, blouse, mundu, soap, and slippers, found at a small clearing near thick screw pines by the river. Uplift Master alerts the police; the family braces for news of a body downstream.

Big Ammachi visits the riverbank where the clothes were found. Knowing the river’s moods, she imagines Elsie—weak from childbirth—seeking cleansing and renewal, yet overwhelmed by the water’s merciless pull. She kisses the soil where Elsie likely stood and departs, burdened by grief.

She then enters Elsie’s mossy “nest,” a private sanctuary, and finds a weighted sheet of Elsie’s drawing paper. The simple image depicts an older mother cradling an infant. Big Ammachi reads it as a message: that she, not Elsie, is to hold and raise Mariamma. Accepting this, she concludes Elsie entered the river deliberately.

Big Ammachi tells no one of the drawing. She hides it with the family genealogy and ceremonial clothing, returning to it on Mariamma’s birthdays and in quiet nights. Each viewing confirms her reading: herself with her namesake, not Elsie—an enduring private memorial as the house’s duties continue.