In this chap­ter of “The Last One at the Wed­ding,” we are intro­duced to a live­ly scene cen­tered around Frank and his inter­ac­tions with his sis­ter, Tam­my, and her daugh­ter, Abi­gail. The chap­ter opens with Abi­gail, exu­ber­ant­ly dressed in a fur­ry blue body­suit and express­ing her excite­ment over being ‘Stitch’ from the ani­mat­ed film “Lilo and Stitch.” Despite her play­ful nature, Frank tries to guide her dur­ing the buf­fet din­ner, empha­siz­ing mod­er­a­tion and good man­ners as many adults are observ­ing them.

Tam­my, enjoy­ing her piña cola­da, engages in con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er guests while Abi­gail eager­ly fills her plate with food, ignor­ing Frank’s advice about por­tion con­trol. As Abi­gail strug­gles with her choic­es at the buf­fet, her clum­si­ness leads to a mishap where a piece of chick­en pic­ca­ta falls to the ground. Frank’s frus­tra­tion esca­lates when Abi­gail refus­es to pick it up, show­cas­ing a blend of child­like inno­cence and stub­born­ness. Even­tu­al­ly, he picks it up him­self to pre­vent wastage and dis­creet­ly tran­si­tions to anoth­er table.

Upon arrival at their table, they meet Ger­ry Levin­son and his wife, Sier­ra. Ger­ry intro­duces his young, glam­orous wife while boast­ing about her ambi­tions as a children’s book author. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of their rela­tion­ship rais­es eye­brows for Frank, high­light­ing a sig­nif­i­cant age dif­fer­ence. As din­ner unfolds, Frank feels out of place amidst the chat­ter about Ger­ry’s legal work and Sierra’s bud­ding writ­ing career, which he con­sumes reluc­tant­ly, mind­ful of the wast­ed chick­en.

While suave jazz plays and Maggie—the hostess—mingles with guests, Frank observes that Aidan and Gwen­dolyn are notably absent. At the table, Tam­my chal­lenges Abigail’s impres­sive triv­ia skills, much to everyone’s amaze­ment; Abi­gail rat­tles off the longest rivers in Europe and Asia effort­less­ly, earn­ing her acco­lades from the guests. This unex­pect­ed bril­liance from Abi­gail brings Frank a moment of pride, mark­ing a rare moment of grat­i­tude for her pres­ence at the gath­er­ing.

The chap­ter encap­su­lates themes of fam­i­ly, the inquis­i­tive nature of chil­dren, and high­lights the com­plex dynam­ics at social gath­er­ings, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of vary­ing adult behav­iors and expec­ta­tions .