Hello Beautiful

The siblings remaining in Chicago stay close, and Sylvie and William frequently visit Cecelia and Izzy. William gets a job with the Chicago Bulls, and he and Sylvie build a happy and peaceful life. But as Sylvie spends time with her family, she feels Alice’s absence. She wants to reach out to her, but she can tell that William won’t even let the thought of Alice enter his mind.

Emeline remembers her childhood dream of being a mother, and she and Josie decide to become foster parents for newborns. When Izzy is 10, Emeline and Josie buy the house next door to Cecelia and knock down the fence. They each create spaces for one another in the other’s residence and begin to refer to the shared properties as the super-duplex. Sylvie is now head librarian, and Izzy visits the library often to ask Sylvie about her childhood. After a while, Sylvie gives Izzy her manuscript of their family’s history, which is now over 300 pages. Izzy shares it with Emeline and Cecelia; when they tell Sylvie she could publish it, Sylvie says she just wrote it for their family.

When Alice begins ninth grade, she is 6’1’’. Alice enjoys knowing she probably resembles her father and feels connected to him. After graduating from high school, Alice enrolls in Boston University. On the drive there, Julia encourages her to be happy and sociable and to try new things.

Early in the spring semester, Julia shows up at Alice’s dorm unannounced. When she arrives, Julia confronts her about the photos she has above her desk: pictures taken of Cecelia’s artwork and murals. Alice acknowledges that she knows Cecelia is her aunt. She learned about her from Rose and then researched her. Alice points out that she and Julia are in the murals; their faces are painted across buildings. Julia is moved and stops scolding Alice, and the two go out to eat.

Sylvie begins to suffer from headaches. When she goes to the doctor, the specialist tells her that, at 47 years old, she has a brain tumor and is terminally ill. Even though she is no longer Catholic, Sylvie thinks she is being punished for betraying her sister. She plans on telling William the news that night.

Sylvie has accepted her death but worries deeply that this will affect William’s mental health. She also finds herself longing for Julia. When she tells William, he asks how he can help and immediately knows what Sylvie doesn’t say: that she needs Julia. However, Sylvie says she will never ask Julia for anything.

The next day, bearing the weight of the news, William goes to the Chicago Bulls practice facility. Kent, now divorced and a practicing doctor, meets him there. Kent says that he saw Sylvie’s MRI scans and confirms that the diagnosis is correct. Kent promises to help him through it, but William says he needs time to think.

William walks toward Pilsen, and at Throop Park, he finds an old basketball and begins to dribble, untangling his thoughts in the process. Feeling responsible for the deterioration of Sylvie and Julia’s relationship, he wants Sylvie’s final days to be as happy and whole as possible. With this clarity in his mind, he picks up his phone and calls Julia.

While at work, Julia worries about Alice. Her daughter has never dated or shown any interest in dating, nor does she engage in any other normal young adult exploration. The phone rings, disrupting her train of thought, and when she picks up, it is William. He tells Julia that Sylvie is dying and has less than a year to live and that all she wants is her sister; Julia simply says no and ends the call. Despite her efforts to hold it together and go about her routine, grief begins to overwhelm her.

Then, Alice calls. Alice still spends a weekly night with her mother, just as she did as a child. Julia tries to act normal and asks her about her work, and Alice tells her she is copy editing a new adaptation of Little Women and asks Julia if she ever read it. Julia remembers an argument she had with Sylvie about which one of them was Jo. Now she knows that the argument has been resolved: She is Jo because Sylvie, as the first to die, is Beth.

At work, Sylvie thinks about the stories of her family and how childhood memories differ from the adult memories. She marvels at how the biggest changes in her adult life came in pairs: first, Izzy’s birth and Charlie’s death on the same day, and then Alice’s birth and Rose’s departure shortly after. She wonders what family event will accompany her own death.

William comes to pick her up at work so they can go break the news to her younger sisters. On learning that Sylvie is dying, Cecelia cries, and Emeline gets angry, insisting that she was supposed to be the one who died first, like Beth.

Later that evening, Sylvie and William discuss Caroline. He tells her about his injury in high school when he also wished to be gone but says that he felt that way in part because he missed his sister despite having never really known her.

At the end of October, William takes the photo of Caroline from the closet, where he keeps it. Finally, he recognizes the connection between his sister and daughter; he kept Alice out of his mind for fear of losing her and repeating his parents’ mistake. He takes the photograph to Cecelia and asks her to paint his sister.

That afternoon, William goes to Arash’s clinic for the first time since learning of Sylvie’s diagnosis. A few other of his old basketball colleagues are there too, summoned by Kent, and they sit beside William, reminding him that he has a support system in place.

One day in October, Sylvie leaves on her lunch break to buy an ice cream cone. When she returns, she thinks she sees Emeline waiting for her at the front desk, but as she moves closer, she realizes it’s Julia. Julia admits that William told her of Sylvie’s illness. The sisters stare at one another in disbelief, and then they go to Charlie’s favorite bar to talk.

Back in Chicago, Julia vacillates between feeling nostalgia for her life in Pilsen and feeling disrupted because she is outside of her comfort zone in New York. Although she doesn’t understand why, she is no longer angry at Sylvie for marrying William. She tells Sylvie that after William’s call, she could no longer sleep or go about her daily life, so on an impulse, she drove to the airport and flew to Chicago.

Sylvie wonders if their meeting is a hallucination, and Julia says it will become more real to her when she tells the rest of the family. Sylvie disagrees, saying she intends to keep their meeting to herself for a while.

Feeling overcome by how much she missed her sister, Julia catches Sylvie up on her life. She tells her about her concerns regarding Alice. Sylvie then acknowledges that they have yet to touch and playfully pretends that they both might be ghosts or spirits. Julia feels overcome with emotion, knowing that she deeply misses her sister, who feels like an integral part of her. When the sisters part, they know that Julia will return again so they can continue their reunion

Alice waits for her mother at one of their favorite restaurants, feeling grateful for a moment of quiet. As soon as Julia arrives and sits down, she tells Alice she has a series of things to tell her. First, she reveals that Sylvie is dying and that they used to be very close. Then, she reveals that Sylvie is married to Alice’s father, who is not dead as she had claimed when Alice was a child. Feeling shocked and overwhelmed, Alice goes outside and calls Rose. Rose confirms that what Julia has said is the truth, and Alice realizes that this is the information she was missing all throughout her childhood. Alice asks her grandmother why she didn’t tell her, even after she became an adult and began her own life, and when Rose has no good answer, Alice begins to feel herself unravel.

Cecelia texts William an address to a playground in North Lawndale. When William arrives, he sees the mural of Caroline. As William scans the mural, depicting the faces of children lined up for a school photo, he realizes with shock that Cecelia has painted one of them as Alice, forcing him to look at her. As he stares at the two girls he shut out of his life, he says, “I’m sorry.” He recognizes this area as the place where he thought he saw Charlie before trying to die by suicide and wonders if Charlie’s spirit lingers on near his family.

During Julia’s second visit, the two sisters are walking down the sidewalk when Julia shares with Sylvie that she told Alice the truth and now Alice is angry with her. They pass an old movie theater, and Sylvie suggests they go inside and see a movie. During the movie, Sylvie reaches out and takes Julia’s hand. In this moment, she feels time collapse, as if all of the memories she shared with her sister are piled on top of one another.

After a shopping trip, Cecelia drives Sylvie and Emeline past the park with the mural of Caroline and Alice. As they slow down near the park, Sylvie sees William sitting on a bench, staring at the mural. For the first time since her diagnosis, Sylvie feels that William might be okay after her death and that some of the closed doors in his heart are finally opening.