A burglar enters Crosley's Manhattan apartment and steals 41 pieces of jewelry, including pieces belonging to both of her grandmothers.

Police arrive at the apartment, dust for fingerprints, and ask Crosley whether she knows who might be responsible for the theft.

Security camera footage reveals the thief watched Crosley leave before entering and wore latex gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints.

Crosley recalls how Russell hired her at Knopf and immediately noticed the large square ring she wore to the interview.

Crosley meets Russell for a final dinner and hands him instructions for caring for her cat during her upcoming trip to Australia.

Russell walks his dogs and then dies by hanging in the barn on his Connecticut property.

Russell's partner calls Crosley to inform her that Russell has died.

Crosley attends the Melbourne writing conference while deliberately pretending that Russell is still alive.

An audience member at one of Crosley's book readings emails her with links to two of her stolen jewelry items listed on eBay.

Crosley purchases the tiger eye ring from the eBay seller, having it mailed to a friend's office address to obtain the seller's return address.

The amulet necklace listing disappears from eBay before Crosley can buy it back.

The amulet necklace reappears for sale by a different seller in Manhattan roughly six months after the original theft.

Crosley goes to the seller's Manhattan address and explains her situation to a man who tells her to call him Dimitri.

Dimitri returns the necklace to Crosley the following day, refusing any payment and saying the theft should never have happened.

Crosley returns to Australia and, rather than jumping from the cliff, throws a broken gold chain over the edge instead.

The memoir opens when a burglar steals 41 pieces of jewelry from Crosley's Manhattan apartment, setting off an obsessive investigation. Exactly one month later, Crosley's friend and former boss Russell Perreault dies by suicide, and the two losses become inextricably linked in her mind. After flying to Melbourne for a writing conference while pretending Russell is still alive, Crosley returns home and doubles down on her search for the stolen pieces. An unexpected email leads her to two items listed on eBay, and she successfully buys back one ring before the second listing disappears, only to resurface months later through a different seller. An elaborate scheme and a confrontation with a shadowy figure named Dimitri leads to the necklace being returned to her without explanation or payment. The memoir concludes with Crosley traveling back to Australia, where she chooses not to jump from a cliff and instead releases a broken chain over the edge as a symbolic act of acceptance.

The central story of loss, denial, and the search for stolen jewelry.

After noticing the thief wears a plastic name badge in the footage, Crosley visits local hospitals and businesses trying to spot him.

Crosley begins blaming herself for the burglary and searches without success for a burglary victim support group.

At a dinner, a friend's mother recounts her own decades-old experience of jewel theft, and Crosley begins to sense she must find a way to move on.

Russell persuades Crosley to buy an antique Dutch spice cabinet from a flea market, which she uses to store her jewelry and which is damaged in the burglary.

Crosley travels to Connecticut by train to meet Russell's partner, and they hug and cry together but exchange very little conversation.

A book discussion at the Melbourne conference turns to whether people who die by suicide deserve forgiveness, and Crosley grows furious.

On the plane home from Melbourne, Crosley impulsively orders two new rings and takes sleeping pills to get through the flight.

Crosley establishes a nightly ritual of sitting across from the restaurant where she last saw Russell and holding imaginary conversations with him.

After noticing her pulse constantly racing, Crosley visits a cardiologist who tells her she is experiencing panic attacks.

Crosley joins a virtual grief support group but grows disgusted when she realizes it mostly fuels her need to wallow in sadness.

A friend poses as a Rolex buyer and goes to the seller's address, finding a strange room where a man and woman guard a safe, and leaves without speaking.

Russell's memorial service is held and Crosley initially opposes it, before admitting that her resistance is partly selfish.

As the COVID-19 pandemic shuts New York City down, Crosley feels the world has finally caught up to her inner state of grief.

Crosley reads old texts and finds a joking exchange in which she and Russell promised to seek each other's permission before dying by suicide.

After returning home from Australia, Crosley unexpectedly finds the missing half of a broken gold chain wedged inside a book.

In the wake of the burglary, Crosley pursues the thief on foot by visiting businesses and blaming herself for being victimized, while friends' stories of theft and a dinner anecdote force her to begin accepting what she cannot control. She travels to Connecticut to meet Russell's grieving partner, and then to Melbourne, where a heated book discussion about forgiveness and suicide sharpens her anger and impulsive decisions on the flight home reveal her emotional state. Back in New York, she creates private rituals of grief, including sitting outside the restaurant where she last saw Russell, and seeks help through a cardiologist, a virtual support group, and stacks of grief self-help books. A friend's risky trip to a suspicious address on Crosley's behalf advances the search for the stolen necklace, and Russell's memorial service forces her to reckon with how tightly she guards her grief from others. The COVID-19 pandemic descends on the city and Crosley finds an unexpected sense of permission to be openly sad, though reading an old text exchange with Russell about suicide cuts her deeply. The pool closes when Crosley makes a startling discovery at home—the missing half of a broken gold chain, found inside Russell's favorite book.

The personal rituals and secondary struggles running beneath Crosley's grief.

Crosley obsessively analyzes the security camera footage outside her building to piece together exactly how and when the burglary unfolded.

At a dinner, Crosley recognizes she must find a way to accept that she may never know what happened to her stolen jewelry.

Crosley discovers Russell and his partner fought over possessions the night before their last dinner, and that his partner told him not to kill himself.

After Crosley alerts the detective to the eBay listings, she is told there is no probable cause to pursue the seller.

Crosley acknowledges that despite knowing it is illogical, she believes recovering the jewelry will somehow bring Russell back to life.

Crosley reads a study on suicide and concludes that Russell's choice to die belonged to him alone and could not rightfully be taken away.

Looking back, Crosley realizes the Connecticut house gatherings ended because a mutual friend had pursued a romantic relationship with Russell's partner.

When James Frey's memoir is exposed as partially fictional, Russell faces months of intense public attack for his role in its publication.

Crosley departs from Knopf to pursue a writing career and later fears that Russell experienced her departure as a personal betrayal.

A series of sexual harassment accusations is levied against Russell, which Crosley later counts among the factors that may have contributed to his death.

During the pandemic, Crosley jogs along an empty Fifth Avenue and is struck by how surreal and hollow the city has become.

At Grand Central Station during the pandemic, Crosley imagines a conversation in which Russell admits that he was filled with sadness.

A woman at a party opens Crosley's locket and asks who the man in the photo is; Crosley says only that he is a deceased friend.

Crosley accompanies a woman named Bec to a 36-foot Sydney cliff and both don wetsuits to jump, but neither follows through.

After Russell's death, Crosley contacts Bec, who confirms she still has Crosley's wetsuit and agrees to attempt the cliff jump together again.

Crosley's grief is driven by a series of revelations that gradually reshape what she understands about Russell's life and her own relationship to loss. Early on, she obsessively examines security footage and confronts the reality that she may never recover what was taken, while in the bargaining stage she uncovers the disturbing detail that Russell's partner told him not to kill himself just hours before their last dinner together. As Part 3 unfolds in flashback, Crosley pieces together how a possible affair, the James Frey scandal, her own departure from Knopf, and sexual harassment accusations each may have worn Russell down over many years. She also works through her belief—articulated plainly and without apology—that Russell's choice to end his life was his alone, a position she holds even as it complicates her grief. The pandemic creates space for the depression stage to take hold, culminating in a quiet but significant imaginary conversation at Grand Central Station in which Crosley finally allows Russell to admit he was sad. The pool ends as Crosley sets her sights on returning to Australia and a cliff she once failed to jump, still searching for Russell in the one act that might let her feel close to his final moments.

The discoveries and emotional shifts that reshape Crosley's understanding of Russell and herself.