In the chap­ter titled “Nor­ma,” the nar­ra­tive unfolds as a reflec­tion of the pro­tag­o­nist’s strained rela­tion­ship with her moth­er fol­low­ing her father’s death. Nor­ma grap­ples with the expec­ta­tions of being a “good daugh­ter,” rec­og­niz­ing her emo­tion­al dis­tance from her moth­er, who is strug­gling with mem­o­ry loss and lone­li­ness. Instead of return­ing to her child­hood home after her father’s pass­ing, she mere­ly sched­ules week­ly vis­its filled with gro­cery shop­ping and yard main­te­nance, refrain­ing from deep­er emo­tion­al engage­ment.

Dur­ing a Christ­mas Eve vis­it that marks ten years since her father’s death, the qui­et of the house con­trasts sharply with cher­ished child­hood mem­o­ries. While alone, Nor­ma feels a wave of nos­tal­gia but ulti­mate­ly avoids con­fronting her feel­ings ful­ly. A night­time dis­tur­bance forces her into the cold where she finds her moth­er out­side, vul­ner­a­bly dressed and search­ing for a lost wed­ding ring from years ago. As Nor­ma tries to bring her moth­er back inside, it becomes appar­ent that her moth­er’s grasp on real­i­ty is fad­ing, as she clings to delu­sions of her deceased hus­band still being present and har­bor fears of being aban­doned.

The nar­ra­tive shifts to a poignant rec­ol­lec­tion of a recent funer­al for her aunt Alice, reveal­ing the tight-knit nature of their fam­i­ly, high­light­ed by moments of humor min­gled with pro­found grief. At the memo­r­i­al karaoke gath­er­ing, the mother’s vit­ri­ol emerges unex­pect­ed­ly, trans­form­ing cel­e­bra­tion into chaos, expos­ing deep­er famil­ial ten­sions and her esca­lat­ing decline. A call for help esca­lates into a hos­pi­tal vis­it after a fright­en­ing episode, show­ing the grav­i­ty of her moth­er’s con­di­tion.

Nor­ma is torn between guilt and love as she nav­i­gates the com­plex land­scape of famil­ial duty ver­sus per­son­al free­dom. Ulti­mate­ly, the rev­e­la­tion of her mother’s past and the seed of doubt around her own iden­ti­ty thrusts Nor­ma into a whirl­wind of emo­tions, com­pli­cat­ing her feel­ings of loy­al­ty and love. Caught between these pres­sures, she starts to grap­ple with her own iden­ti­ty and the life choic­es she has made, sens­ing a pro­found unrav­el­ing of her past as she begins to con­front painful truths about her ori­gins and fam­i­ly dynam­ics .