Comfort & Joy

After the doctor’s appointment, they all get ice cream together, and Joy sees a segment on the news about the plane crash. She panics. Bobby and Daniel ask what’s wrong, but she does not tell them. Back at home, Joy helps Bobby reminisce with his dad about going to the fair together. Bobby asks Joy to stay as they watch a movie together. When Daniel returns downstairs from putting Bobby to sleep, he confesses that he did not even consider putting up a Christmas tree. Joy touches his thigh, and he reacts with surprise, backing away. Joy feels embarrassed and struggles to sleep. She hears Daniel pacing upstairs.

The next morning, Joy wanders outside and takes pictures until lunch. When Bobby and Daniel get home, Bobby tells her it’s beach night, and she is invited. As they drive, they listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” When they arrive at the coast of the Pacific Ocean, Joy realizes that this is the fresh start she wants. Daniel and Bobby talk about moving and both agree to consider the other’s perspective. Bobby learns to fly a kite, and Daniel lights a fire. Bobby asks Daniel to dance with Joy, and they do, slipping quickly into a rhythm. Joy is mesmerized by Daniel and allows herself to wonder what a new life with them might look like. Bobby reveals it is Daniel’s first beach night, too—it was something he used to do with his mom.

That night, Joy thinks about Daniel as she lies in bed. Early the next morning, she tries to comfort Daniel as he watches Bobby cry and beg his mother to appear to him again. Joy realizes that she misses Stacey. The thought of her sister no longer hurts her—rather than resentment, she feels longing. Bobby returns and tells them that he fears forgetting his mother. Daniel brings out a scrapbook and shows Bobby pictures of their family throughout Bobby’s childhood. They talk about their memories of Maggie, Bobby’s mother. Bobby eventually falls asleep, and Joy begins to say “you and I,” referring to her and Daniel, but pauses, hesitant to proceed. Daniel responds that he is losing his mind and exits.

Joy tries and fails to go back to sleep. Once again, she tries to relate to Daniel, and he walks away. When she goes downstairs, Bobby asks her to help him read again while Daniel works outside. Later, Daniel comes in because a storm is approaching. He asks Bobby to turn on the TV, where they see a segment in which a reporter interviews Stacey. Stacey is crying, wearing the yellow outfit that Joy gifted her for her birthday last year, and saying that she hopes Joy comes home. In that moment, Joy realizes that she cannot stay. Her time there has been a fantasy, and she needs to face reality. As much as she wanted to make her sister miss her, she doesn’t want Stacey to think she is dead. She tries to call, but the power goes out, so she cannot reach her. In her dream, Joy hears strange noises and her sister’s pleas for her to wake up. She recalls moments in her childhood with Stacey and flashes back to their interaction in her driveway before she fled. Bobby wakes her up, scared she has left already, and tells her he wants her to stay. She tells him that she has to leave soon, but when Bobby asks her to stay until Christmas, she agrees.

Later that morning, she wakes up and notices that Daniel and Bobby are gone. She knows she is only a guest, but she wishes they’d include her. After trying the dead phone again, she decides to go to town to call her sister. She walks to town, realizing that it’s far longer than she remembered. It starts raining. Exhausted, freezing, and wet, she finds a gas station with a phone. She reaches Stacey’s voicemail, which says that she and Thom are not available. She leaves a message and begins walking back to the lodge. As the storm rages on, she wishes she’d asked someone for a ride.

As she walks back to the lodge, it begins snowing. Joy is freezing, exhausted, and losing hope that she will make it back. She wants to stop moving but knows she will never make it back if she does. She is thinking about Stacey when she hears an engine, and Daniel and Bobby pull up next to her. Bobby tells her how worried they were; they’ve been driving around for hours searching for her, and he seems angry because he thought she left for good. Daniel looks angry and worried. Bobby asks his dad if he wants Joy to stay for Christmas, and he reluctantly responds, “Of course.” As Jingle Bell Rock plays on the radio, Bobby asks what Joy does for Christmas, and she explains that she goes to church and lights a candle for her mom. She agrees to light one for Bobby’s mom if he goes to church with her. When they get to the lodge, Daniel and Bobby embrace. Daniel tells Bobby he is proud of him. Bobby asks if Joy can stay with them if she returns, and Daniel promises that she can.

Joy takes a shower and wonders how she will be received when she returns to her real home and reveals she is alive. She goes back downstairs, and they watch a movie. It is her penultimate night at the lodge. She thinks that this is the perfect night that she has wanted all her life and tries to enjoy every minute. She wants Daniel to ask her to stay. While playing board games, Bobby calls her “mommy” and casually corrects himself. Joy notices Daniel’s uncomfortable reaction. When Daniel tells Bobby it’s time for bed, he says he needs to wrap presents with Joy. They practice reading Sam-I-Am, which is Bobby’s present for his dad. Joy asks Bobby to write down a list as her present to Daniel. Bobby struggles with writing but manages to write down a misspelled list containing Joy’s ideas for the lodge’s renovations, including changing the name and planting flowers.

When Bobby goes to bed, Joy sets off to find a final present. She walks outside under the light of an almost-full moon and hears a woman’s voice softly say, “There.” She looks down and sees a white arrowhead. She puts it in her pocket and thanks Maggie for guiding her.

As Joy looks out her window the next morning, she thinks of Stacey and her apology. Joy has not yet forgiven her, but she has accepted her situation. When Joy comes downstairs, Bobby asks her if she wants to go to a nursing home with them to help with Christmas brunch before church. Joy excitedly agrees—this is what she did on Christmas Eve with her mother. She sees it as fate. While Daniel and Bobby go off to help at the nursing home, she helps a woman walk to the brunch room, and people gasp because she usually uses a wheelchair. The woman keeps asking for her sister, who has been gone for 14 years according to the staff.

Joy finds Bobby playing alone in the recreation room, disappointed that he’s too little to help. He says his mother used to let him help in small ways, and Joy encourages him to tell his dad how he feels. When Daniel finds them, he apologizes and explains he is still learning how to be a dad. Bobby is nervous about church, but Daniel promises not to let go of his hand. With Daniel and Joy on either side of him, Bobby makes it through the mass. Joy realizes how much she has missed her own faith, having forgone church since her mother’s death.

After mass, they stand in the square and listen to carolers. Joy feels happy and ready to reach for the life she wants: She decides to tell Daniel how she feels. As she tries to speak to him, a headache takes over, and Daniel seems unable to hear her. She feels intense pain and sees her sister standing in the crowd. Bobby begs her not to leave them. Joy hears “CLEAR” several times, and then chest pain makes her lose consciousness.