A Radio Free Boston broadcast confirms to Garth that June got his message, and that Mayday will deal with his “loose cannon” that evening. After Daisy gets word, she sneaks out of school at 10 pm, folds herself into a very tiny space, and rides in the back of a honey-delivery truck until they arrive at a river’s bank. And guess who’s there? June!
Mama Mayday hugs Daisy and says they’re getting her — and not Becka — out of Gilead. Daisy protests, but June reasons that Daisy has been threatening Mayday, so now she’s a liability. “Rita warned you this would happen. I warned you,” she reminds the teen. “We are going to win, Daisy. But you cannot put the people fighting for that at risk just because you think one person is special, alright?”
Daisy fights back, accusing June of leaving before the fight was over and the girls were free. June argues that she can’t free the girls Daisy’s become friends with because they don’t even know that freedom is exactly what they should want. So Daisy reasons that she should be allowed to go back to the school and help win hearts and minds to the cause. June is resolutely against this… until Daisy starts listing the names of the girls, and June realizes that Agnes — aka her daughter, Hannah — is there. Off June’s shocked reaction, Daisy puts it together: “She’s the one you left behind.”
June starts crying. “What’s she like?” she asks. “She’s just a really good person,” Daisy tells her. “She’s the one that we all want to be like, you know?” Poor June wonders if her long-lost daughter is happy. “She could be. They all could be,” Daisy replies. Still, June isn’t going to Daisy return to her assignment, but the kid digs in: “You need to learn to believe in someone other than yourself, June.” (Side note: Daisy cumulatively has spent all of, what, two hours with June, and she’s already got her pegged? Impressive.)
So June relents. She’s not happy about it — nor about when she asks Daisy to stay safe, and Daisy replies, “I don’t think I can, to be honest” — so all she can do is hug her again and hope that God protects her. “I think She will,” Daisy says. Then June takes off in a boat, and Daisy crawls back into her honey hiding spot. (Side note: I loved this scene and that perfect last line.)
But that drawn-out conversation comes with a cost: The truck returns to the school grounds too late, and the Aunts know that Daisy is not in her bed. A quick-thinking Garth gives her his cigarette and has her take a drag, then makes a big show of how he caught her smoking. That earns her a lecture from Aunt Lydia, but it also a) hides the fact that Daisy was gone for a while, and b) affords Daisy an opportunity to shame the older woman for doing nothing for Becka.
