Frances and Malcolm leave a fashionable Upper East Side dinner party early without informing the hostess.

Financial advisor Mr. Baker informs Frances that her money is completely gone and her property will be repossessed.

Frances tells Malcolm their finances are ruined, and they arrange to sell all of their remaining possessions.

Joan offers Frances and Malcolm the use of her Paris apartment, and the idea steadily appeals to them.

Susan breaks off her engagement to Malcolm after learning he plans to move to Paris with Frances.

Frances and Malcolm board a ship bound for France, managing to bring their cat, Small Frank, aboard.

Malcolm meets Madeleine, a psychic medium, after hearing a crying woman leaving her tent on the ship's deck.

The elderly woman Madeleine predicted would die passes away overnight, and Madeleine is dismissed from the ship.

Frances and Malcolm arrive at Joan's Paris apartment and begin their new life in the city.

Small Frank bites Frances and dashes out of the apartment, disappearing into the streets of Paris.

Private investigator Julius is hired to locate Madeleine in Paris and finds her within days.

Madeleine conducts a séance, and the group gathered in the apartment makes contact with Franklin's spirit.

Frances spends the last of her money on an extravagant party for everyone she has met in Paris.

Frances runs a bath, cuts her arms, and dies by suicide while everyone else sleeps.

After leaving the police station, Malcolm buys an armful of pink flowers and walks toward Susan.

Frances Price and her son Malcolm discover they are completely bankrupt and must leave New York for Joan's Paris apartment. On the voyage over, they befriend Madeleine, a psychic medium, while their cat Small Frank—possessed by the spirit of Malcolm's dead father, Franklin—attracts strange attention from those around them. In Paris, Small Frank runs away after Frances reveals her secret plan, sending everyone into a search that eventually reunites them with Madeleine and brings Franklin's spirit back into contact with the family. Frances steadily spends down her remaining money, gathering a strange new circle of friends around her in Joan's apartment. She throws one final extravagant party, making peace with the people in her life before carrying out the second part of her plan. After Frances's death, Malcolm—changed by everything he has been through—steps out into the streets of Paris with an armful of flowers to find Susan.

The headline events of Frances and Malcolm's final journey.

Malcolm steals a jade picture frame from the hostess of the dinner party he and Frances have just left.

Frances gives an unhoused man twenty dollars in exchange for an honest account of how he will spend it.

A lizard darts into Frances's bedroom and she and Malcolm pack their bags and flee to the Four Seasons.

Malcolm meets Susan for lunch and admits he has not told Frances about their engagement or made plans to move out.

Frances threatens to burn down her apartment and everything in it unless the buyer agrees to her terms.

Frances and Malcolm sneak out of the Four Seasons without checking out after her credit cards are declined.

Malcolm and the medium Madeleine drink together aboard the ship and then sleep together in her cabin.

Frances sedates Small Frank with Valium and hides him inside her purse to smuggle him through French customs.

Frances and Malcolm arrive at Mme Reynard's dinner expecting a party, but discover they are her only guests.

Malcolm watches from his apartment window as a shunned pigeon drops dead onto a sleeping man who has no one to tell.

Frances flushes a large amount of leftover cash down the toilet rather than give it to people she knows.

Everyone in the apartment watches from the window as a violent confrontation erupts between park dwellers and police.

During the party, Malcolm places Susan's father's watch back on her wrist as a quiet gesture of commitment.

During the apartment talent show, Frances tells the story of deliberately setting her childhood bedroom curtains on fire.

Mme Reynard discovers Frances's body in the bath and begs Malcolm not to look, but Malcolm goes in anyway.

Even before Frances and Malcolm learn they are bankrupt, their habits reveal a life of entitled detachment: Malcolm steals from hosts, and Frances uses money to manage nearly every human interaction. The mechanics of their departure from New York are filled with chaotic, absurdist detours—fleeing a lizard, sneaking out of a hotel, and smuggling a cat through customs. In Paris, secondary characters gradually fill the apartment, each arriving through an unexpected chain of connections that began with Mme Reynard's lonely dinner invitation. The apartment becomes a hub of borrowed belonging, with everyone from a wine merchant's neighbor to a psychic medium quietly moving in. As the final party approaches, small personal gestures—a watch returned, a childhood story told—signal real shifts in Malcolm's character. Frances's death is discovered by Mme Reynard, and despite being asked not to look, Malcolm confronts the fact of his mother's death directly.

The smaller moments that quietly shape Frances and Malcolm's story.

Frances tells Mr. Baker she had planned to die before her money ran out, but the money ran out first.

Frances and Malcolm drink wine with Joan over lunch and agree to move into Joan's Paris apartment.

Malcolm tells Susan about his lonely childhood, describing how his parents failed to celebrate his birthday or acknowledge him.

Frances collects 170,000 euros in cash from Mr. Baker's office, the last of their remaining wealth.

Madeleine tells Malcolm she had warned the elderly crying woman in her tent that she was going to die.

The ship's doctor takes Malcolm to the morgue and shows him the dead woman's body, still covered in confetti.

Frances spends the night in the captain's quarters and, lying naked together, tells him about her governess Olivia.

On the train to Paris, Madeleine explains to Malcolm that she can see a green aura around people who are dying.

At Saint-Sulpice church in Paris, Frances speaks her two-part plan aloud to herself for the first time.

When a Paris bistro waiter ignores Frances and Malcolm, Frances sets the table's flowers on fire with her lighter.

Cycling to Buttes-Chaumont, Malcolm calls Susan and discovers she has become engaged to her former fiancé Tom again.

Malcolm erupts in anger at Franklin's spirit during the séance, shouting about a lifetime of neglect, then smashes his glass.

Joan tells Frances at the Musée d'Orsay that she finds Frances's plan to die by suicide a tired cliché.

Late at night in the kitchen, Frances softens toward Susan and admits she knows she treats her terribly.

Frances wakes Madeleine for a private séance and tells Franklin's spirit that she will die very soon.

From the moment Frances tells Mr. Baker she had intended to die before her money ran out, the novel's darker undercurrent is set in motion. The voyage to France is haunted by death: Madeleine's predictions, a corpse in the ship's morgue, and her quiet revelation that she sees green auras around the dying. Once in Paris, Frances speaks her plan aloud for the first time, and the city begins to feel like the setting she always knew it would be for her final chapter. Malcolm's slow awakening unfolds through confrontation—with Susan over the phone, with his father's spirit at the séance, and ultimately with his own long-suppressed rage. Frances's final night is one of revelations and guarded goodbyes, as she softens toward Susan in the kitchen and secretly contacts Franklin to say farewell. The pool ends with Frances telling Franklin she will die soon, bringing the novel's emotional arc to its quiet, decisive close.