Contains spoilers for this episode and earlier episodes.
Cobel returns to Salt’s Neck, where Lumon’s abandoned ether factory has left a decaying town and residents struggling with addiction. She asks Hampton, a friend from their childhood work at the factory, to take her to her aunt Sissy. Fearing Lumon surveillance, Cobel hides in the back of his truck and ignores a call from Devon. Sissy resents the visit and will not explain a recent conversation with Drummond. Inside the house, Cobel finds her mother Charlotte’s bedroom locked and learns that her own childhood possessions have been cleared away.
Cobel and Sissy argue about Charlotte’s illness and death while Cobel was attending a Lumon boarding school. After finding the bedroom key, Cobel lies on her mother’s bed and cries herself to sleep. Hampton later wakes her; they inhale ether and kiss, but Cobel refuses to leave without finding something Sissy would have kept. In an outside storeroom she discovers her Wintertide trophy with a notebook hidden inside. Its diagrams reveal that Cobel invented severance, although Lumon gives Jame Eagan the credit. Sissy tries to burn the notebook, and Cobel saves it. Warned that a car is approaching, she escapes in Hampton’s truck, leaving him behind. On the road she answers Devon, learns Mark is reintegrating and asks him to explain everything.