Chap­ter 34 opens with the nar­ra­tor hasti­ly descend­ing the stairs, delib­er­ate­ly avoid­ing the sight of the recent­ly repaired win­dow. Instead, their atten­tion is divert­ed to the cof­fee table, where the vase has been placed back at its cen­ter, pro­vok­ing a com­plex swirl of emo­tions. They instinc­tive­ly reach for the vase and head out­side to dis­card it in the garbage bin, feel­ing the rain drench them as they bury the bro­ken vase in the bag that holds its shat­tered pieces from the pre­vi­ous night. This sim­ple action becomes sym­bol­ic, the rain wash­ing over them as they dis­pose of a reminder of the past, one that con­tin­ues to haunt their thoughts. The act of throw­ing the vase away, while small, feels sig­nif­i­cant, rep­re­sent­ing a desire to remove rem­nants of the past that have become painful to car­ry.

As the nar­ra­tor attempts to move on from the emo­tion­al weight of the vase, a crow caws loud­ly from the front yard, draw­ing their gaze upward. The tree out­side is odd­ly full of black birds, which stirs a strange sense of nos­tal­gia, remind­ing them of the first day of school when excite­ment had filled the air. The vivid mem­o­ry of the leaves and the feel­ings of hope that came with the sea­son shift to some­thing more unset­tling as the nar­ra­tor approach­es the tree. There, they notice Joe perched on a low branch, his talons clutch­ing a slip of paper, and as they get clos­er, they read Juniper’s hand­writ­ing on the note: “Dear Joe, please help us.” This mes­sage sends a cold shiv­er down their spine, and their instinc­tive reac­tion is to back away, their eyes fill­ing with tears. The scene is eerie, the con­nec­tion between Juniper’s plea and the pres­ence of the crow leav­ing the nar­ra­tor deeply unset­tled and won­der­ing about the unspo­ken com­mu­ni­ca­tion unfold­ing before them.

Joe flut­ters down beside the nar­ra­tor, who is still trans­fixed by Juniper’s note, feel­ing a strange sense of urgency as the crow then hops to the ground. The nar­ra­tor watch­es as Joe nudges some­thing in the grass, their curios­i­ty grow­ing. As they lean clos­er to see what Joe is doing, the crow picks up a shiny object with its beak and drops it at their feet. It’s their father’s wed­ding band, an item typ­i­cal­ly kept in his wal­let while he’s at work. This dis­cov­ery is a shock­ing rev­e­la­tion, caus­ing the nar­ra­tor to recall their father’s lost wal­let, a mem­o­ry that resur­faces with a new under­stand­ing. The real­iza­tion dawns that Juniper had not been search­ing the truck as ini­tial­ly thought; instead, she had been look­ing for the wal­let, which she had found or per­haps even tak­en. The sig­nif­i­cance of this moment grows, as the con­nec­tion between Juniper, Joe, and the mys­te­ri­ous occur­rences in their lives deep­ens.

Hold­ing the wed­ding ring in their hand, the nar­ra­tor reflects on recent con­ver­sa­tions with the ornithol­o­gist they had inter­viewed, learn­ing that crows are incred­i­bly intel­li­gent crea­tures capa­ble of under­stand­ing con­cepts like reci­procity and ret­ri­bu­tion. Crows are known to give gifts and hold grudges, and the nar­ra­tor begins to won­der whether the crows in their yard might have some aware­ness of the dynam­ics in their house­hold. Could Joe have found the wal­let where it had been lost, or had the crow stolen it ini­tial­ly? This pos­si­bil­i­ty rais­es unset­tling ques­tions about the role of these birds in their lives, and the nar­ra­tor is left with a sense of won­der and unease. The enig­mat­ic pres­ence of Joe and the oth­er crows lingers in the narrator’s mind, sug­gest­ing that their con­nec­tion to the fam­i­ly runs deep­er than mere coin­ci­dence. As the chap­ter clos­es, the nar­ra­tor is left con­tem­plat­ing the strange, almost mys­ti­cal bond between the crows and their house­hold, won­der­ing what the birds might know or under­stand about the hid­den truths of their lives.