How It All Goes Down
- After two weeks, Laurel's dad is still in bad shape. David drives her to visit him every couple of days.
- The doctors found a toxin in her dad's blood that no one has ever seen before, so they're treating it the best they can, but they think he won't last much longer.
- Barnes starts calling Laurel's house every day, but Laurel just erases the messages he leaves, and doesn't tell her mom about it.
- Then her mom calls from the hospital with news from the doctors: Laurel's dad is showing signs of heart failure, and they're estimating that he has less than a week to live.
- David drives Laurel out to the hospital immediately, and they see Barnes in the hospital room. He has her mom signing a bunch of forms, which is weird because normally she takes forever to wade through the legalese before committing to signing something.
- Barnes leaves (though not before thoroughly creeping Laurel out), and Laurel asks her mom what's going on. Apparently she decided to sell after all, since Barnes showed up and upped his offer.
- Laurel protests, and her mom drags her into the hallway for a chat. The medical bills have put them in deep debt, and if it comes down to selling the land or selling the bookstore, well, the bookstore has the potential to keep bringing in money, so bye-bye land.
- Laurel understands where her mom is coming from and how rough the past few weeks have been, but she can't let the land go now (in part because Tamani is living on it).
- So Laurel picks up Barnes's business card and drags David out of there, saying they're going to go out and get some dinner.
- David drives Laurel to the neighborhood with Barnes's address on it from his business card. They find it—it's a big, rundown house—and sneak up to it.
- Peering in a window, they see Barnes with two other dudes who are also pretty ugly. On the floor is some weird, half-human, half-animal looking thing. It looks like it's sleeping, but suddenly it cracks an eye open and stares straight at Laurel.