In this passage from Chapter 6, Kidd uses an allusion, hyperbole, and a flashback to show how Lily begins to intertwine the scientific ideas she hears in the news with her own hopes. She stays outside in the garden after August and Rosaleen leave to go to bed and lets her thoughts drift toward the sky:

August disappeared into the house, and Rosaleen headed for her cot in the honey house, but I stayed on and stared at the sky, imagining Ranger 7 blasting away for it. I knew one day I would go back into the parlor when no one was around and touch the Lady’s heart. Then I would show August the picture of my mother and see if the moon broke loose and fell out of the sky.

The flashback at the end of this passage connects this thought of Lily’s to her earlier dream about the moon cracking. When she had that dream before, it represented the total upheaval of her life as she ran away from T. Ray. The return of the cracked moon at this later point shows that her old fears haven’t completely disappeared. She still worries that she will somehow destroy everything because she makes a mistake, just as she believes she destroyed her family when she causes T. Ray’s gun to discharge on that fateful morning. The hyperbolic thought that showing August the photo of her mother might actually cause the moon to “break loose” shows how much she has already come to depend on the Boatwright family. She is terrified of disrupting things, but is also desperate to learn more about her mother and about August.

The allusion to the Ranger 7 NASA space probe aligns Lily’s hopes for the future with the “Space Race” of the 1960s. Ranger 7 launched on July 28, 1964, took the first clear photos of the moon, and sent them back to earth. Lily imagines it “blasting away” toward this seemingly impossible goal. Thinking about that enormous endeavor helps her to frame her own search for answers as more achievable.