The final section brings closure to many of the key conflicts throughout the novel. Cece’s dementia cannot be staved off, but in an ironic twist, it brings her closer to Garrett. Despite her cognitive decline and frequent confusion, she still loves and trusts Garrett. Though she cannot recall his name, she knows him in an instinctive way and is truly content and unagitated only when she is in his presence. This is a reversal of the years that Garrett spent away from Cece doing fieldwork. It is, in a sense, as though she is both regaining the connection they lost to physical distance in those years and affirming her choice of a marriage partner. Their closeness in this period resolves The Evolving Purpose of Marriage: Their love and marriage have been imperfect, but it has been meaningful and satisfying, nonetheless. Commitment and Its Costs caused Cece to place Garrett’s career above her own professional pursuits and personal endeavors in many cases, but in the end, she is content with the life she’s had.

Importantly, the novel’s ending brings about a kind of resolution to the tension between Charlie and Garrett. Throughout their adult lives, Garrett has been tormented by the sense that he betrayed his friend by “stealing” Cece from him. He has paradoxically longed to talk openly about this with Charlie and dreaded the possibility of Charlie broaching the subject. When Charlie finally does so at age 74, the topic of Cece dovetails with the topic of Elias’s death. Garrett has spent a lifetime berating himself for both incidents, blaming himself for the harmful repercussions of events that were largely beyond his control. Charlie forgives Garrett, though not in so many words, assuring Garrett that Cece made the right choice. By finally discussing this matter, Garrett frees himself from the burden of Elias’s death and the harm he has done to his friendship with Charlie.

Charlie, too, finds a kind of peace with the way his life has turned out, content with friendship instead of marriage. That he has kept the wedding ring that Cece gave him decades earlier suggests that he will never truly “get over” Cece. He will always love her more than he can ever love another woman, but he has accepted this, and in doing so, he has found peace and contentment. Accepting that he will always love Cece and conveying this truth to Garrett is freeing for Charlie.

Lana also experiences complicated thoughts about marriage in this section—these largely come as she observes her parents’ marriage, not unlike what Garrett did at her age. As her father was then, she is skeptical about marriage, unwittingly reiterating his disdain for the institution. She is filled with compassion for the way her parents’ marriage has directly and indirectly caused pain for others—namely Charlie and Jasper. She cares greatly for Jasper, as evident in her decision to make a documentary about the destruction of Salish by wildfire. Both the fire itself and the film dramatize Human Impacts on the Environment, and this environmental destruction also symbolizes the emotional fallout of individual choices, such as Cece’s choice to marry Garrett. Lana recognizes, in ways that her parents do not, that much of Jasper’s pain stemmed indirectly from a kind of emotional abandonment. Jasper felt abandoned by his father, Charlie, who unintentionally directed his love toward Cece. Lana, importantly, has seen the love that Charlie has for Jasper and has witnessed his deep desire to help him, and she understands that Charlie is not to blame for Jasper’s death.

The destruction of the Margolis cottage by wildfire brings an end to an era, as if to close the door on the friendship between Charlie, Garrett, and Cece. The fire proves the certainty that Garrett has professed throughout his life that human interference negatively impacts the natural world. It is as though the natural world is both reclaiming the land from humans and wiping away the damage that humans have done, as if to erase the past and start fresh. This serves as a parallel for the renewed relationship between Charlie and Garrett.