- Three days after Orin's suicide, we're back in front of the Mannon home.
- Seth, who isn't drunk for once, is singing "Shenandoah" again.
- He's alone and talking to himself, complaining about how Lavinia keeps picking all of the best flowers.
- He lets it go because he figures it has to do with Orin's funeral.
- As Seth continues to talk to himself, we find out that people aren't believing that Orin's death was an accident, which is what Lavinia's been telling everybody.
- Lavinia shows up with some flowers and asks Seth to have Hannah put them in some water.
- (She's trying to spruce the place up for Peter, who's supposed to show up later.)
- Getting awfully familiar, Seth tells Lavinia he's seen her standing outside at all hours of the morning and that he's concerned she's not sleeping.
- He offers to move a sofa onto the porch for her, to give her a place to sleep outside the house.
- Lavinia says she can't stand being there and can't wait to leave, which is why she wants to marry Peter.
- Seth agrees that she needs to get herself married and get as far away from that house and the whole town ASAP.
- Lavinia gets awfully excited, saying she just wants to leave the house to rot and fall apart.
- Hazel comes up the drive. She's not coming to make up with Lavinia. She wants to confront Lavinia about Orin's death.
- She doesn't believe it was an accident.
- Lavinia tells her she better watch what she says, because Peter was there and there was no way Orin killed himself.
- Hazel says she doesn't think Orin's responsible for ending his life. She tells Lavinia that she blames her for what happened.
- Lavinia stays surprisingly cool and tells Hazel to drop it.
- Hazel does drop it, after a short argument, but she goes right into another super fun topic: she tells Lavinia that she can't marry Peter because she'll ruin his life.
- Hazel's completely terrified that whatever evil plagues the Mannons will infect Peter, too.
- Hazel mentions that Peter got into a nasty argument with her and their mother this morning, which he's never done before. For her, this is proof that the Mannon evil is already poisoning Peter's soul.
- She threatens to tell Peter the truth about everything.
- She also tells Lavinia that she needs to honestly ask God and herself if it's right that she marries Peter.
- Lavinia threatens to get Orin's gun and use it to kill Hazel unless she leaves immediately.
- Hazel agrees to go, but tells Lavinia that she needs to let Peter read what Orin wrote. Oh, and also that she's told Peter that Orin wanted him to read something, which means Lavinia's kind of stuck.
- Peter's about to show up, so Hazel darts out the back way to avoid being seen.
- When Peter finally arrives and gets to talking with Lavinia, you can tell things have changed.
- At first they talk about some normal engaged couple stuff, but then the conversation switches to how much they both hate the Mannon home, and how much they hate the town.
- Peter gets pretty angry, and Lavinia tells him she's never seen him like this before.
- She also mentions that Hazel's been to see her, and told her a couple of things, including that she shouldn't marry Peter.
- Lavinia pleads that she just wants to live with him forever and doesn't want him to ever suspect her of doing anything evil or wrong.
- Peter promises, but gets a little weirded out. (Why this denial if she didn't do anything?)
- Lavinia decides they should get married right away, that night. As in, on the same day of her brother's funeral.
- Peter thinks this is pretty inappropriate. He demands to know what's going on—if, in fact, Orin wrote something that would make him change his mind about her.
- Almost out of nowhere, Lavinia says that they can't get married and she tries to break it off.
- Peter's getting more confused by the second.
- Lavinia realizes she needs a way to get Peter to leave her. She decides to dramatically "admit" that she got it on with Avahanni when she was on vacation in the islands. She tells Peter she wanted to experience love and lust without guilt.
- This is too shocking for Peter to bear, and he leaves Lavinia for good.
- Lavinia tries to shout after him that she was lying about Avahanni—please come back! No luck.
- Lavinia hears Seth coming back, still singing that same song.
- She tells him that she's decided to spend the rest of her life inside the house, with the "ghosts of the Mannon dead." She knows she deserves a lifetime of loneliness and atonement.
- Seth almost begs her to reconsider, but she insists, and tells him to close all the shutters and nail them down so she can spend the rest of her life in darkness, alone.
- She also tells Seth to make Hannah throw out all the flowers.
- Seth reluctantly agrees to Lavinia's request.
- Seth disappears for a minute, and Lavinia's left standing alone. She hears the first pair of shutters bang shut, and walks into the house.