The spring of 2028 brings the seventh-grade final inquiry project, and Bea Wenckheim makes a bold decision to film a twenty-five-minute documentary about forgotten Hungarian women educators between 1880 and 1920. She utilizes a small digital camera to interview Lola's grandmother, Mrs. Halloway, and the elderly Margit Halmos inside her forest cottage. But the operation hits a wall when Marcus Wenckheim intercepts the topic. He places an eleven-minute call to Pongrátz Academy headmistress Mrs. Vass, offering a massive eighty-thousand-euro library renovation bribe to ensure the critical Halmos interview is purged from the final cut.
Refusing to be silenced, Bea coordinates with Lola's squad to secure the footage. They copy the master file across multiple secure channels, embedding one inside the National Archive and another in Halloway's safe. To counter Marcus's censorship, Headmistress Halloway schedules an explosive parallel screening in the Ivybridge auditorium on Thursday, May 28, complete with a public panel discussion featuring Mr. Bartlett and the senior Circle members.
With Marcus sitting silently in the back row, Bea steps to the lectern and delivers a fearless dedication speech about entering the forbidden rooms of family history. During the panel, Lola's grandmother speaks the phrase 'Reading Circle' out loud for the first time in public, shattering 135 years of absolute secrecy. Outmaneuvered, Marcus quietly resigns from the foundation board, choosing a strategic retreat over public exposure.
As the dust settles, life shifts beautifully into summer. Lola's mother and Gabriel announce their autumn engagement, and the family spends an easy vacation at a lakeside cottage in Szigliget. Bea's mother files for formal legal separation, allowing Bea to escape her father's control and transfer back to Ivybridge for eighth grade. The volume closes in October 2028 when an ancient envelope arrives from a Munich collector: it is an unopened, returned postal letter from Louisa Ivybridge to Henriette Vance dated January 14, 1894, sealed with an ivy leaf, waiting for Lola to break it open.
