Chapter 24

Natalie launches a plan to move to a large Idaho property, enlisting her mother and realtors. She finds a five-hundred-acre former cattle ranch and calls the elderly owner, learning of his son’s recent death. Despite initial rejection, she overbids by $500,000 and wins the sale.

She approaches Doug with the listing, framing it as a permanent solution for Caleb’s instability. Doug agrees to fund the project after seeing the property but names a price: he will provide $5 million if Natalie commits to having more children with Caleb. Natalie, unsettled by the demand, agrees.

Leaving Doug’s office, Natalie witnesses Amelia crushing pills into pudding in the kitchen, a reminder of the household’s dysfunction. Upstairs, Natalie chastises Caleb for letting Clementine nap too long, then finds him absorbed in conspiratorial videos about schools and masculinity.

Natalie presents the ranch to Caleb as his purpose. He is enthralled, and she secures his commitment in exchange for increased sex to conceive siblings “for Clementine.” Caleb adds conditions: the children will be homeschooled with a curriculum he chooses, and the ranch will avoid cattle in favor of vegetables to avoid “eating terror.”

Natalie accepts the homeschooling by planning to hire a teacher and signals she already has a name in mind for the ranch, cementing the move as both a strategic escape and a reshaping of their family’s future.