On a sunny spring day, Bud and Tim attend Leo’s eighth birthday block party on their Brooklyn street. Bud has his face painted like a baboon and Tim like a meerkat; they are the only adults with painted faces. Leo, now eight, tells them that he’s no longer afraid of the dark. Bud gives Leo Rubik’s Cubes, a hockey stick, and a custom Hartford Whalers jersey with “LEO” on the back. Leo hugs them both.

Clara arrives and bonds with Leo over the Minions movie, giving him a Slinky. Seth, Leo’s father, tells Bud about their family tradition of releasing a balloon for their deceased daughter, Lucy. After the party ends, Bud, Tim, and Clara watch the family release a single pink balloon that rises and disappears into the sky.

Bud surprises Tim and Clara with a helicopter tour of Manhattan. A large mechanic named Tony lifts Tim into the aircraft. The pilot, Alan, bonds with Tim over philosophy of life. During the flight over the city, Clara holds Bud’s hand. Tim tells Bud he did well.

That evening, Bud, Tim, and Clara eat Thai food and drink wine in Tim’s kitchen. Clara tells Tim that her firefighter father died the previous fall. She asks Tim if he ever experienced suicidal ideation after his accident. Tim shows her a keloid scar on his wrist, admitting to Bud that he lied about getting it in a boating accident. He reveals that he attempted to die by suicide twice—once with pills and once with a stolen scalpel—and describes the constant physical and psychic pain that drove him to addiction and despair. Together, they toast to the fact that such attempts failed.

As Tim drinks wine, it dribbles from his mouth. The glass falls and shatters, and he collapses backward in his chair. Bud catches Tim’s head. Clara calls 911, and paramedics arrive, transporting him to Methodist Hospital. Tim and Clara follow, though Tim eventually persuades Clara to return home and pack. Before she leaves the waiting room, Clara touches Bud’s stomach, ribs, hands, and head, explaining how the body holds trauma and identifying his physical symptoms of stress.

After hours in the waiting room, a nurse named Tara takes Bud to see Tim, who explains he has deep vein thrombosis and was visiting a specialist in Los Angeles. When Bud offers to stay overnight, Tara says that only family can do so. Tim insists that Bud is family. He kisses Bud on the forehead and says that he is “tired of funerals” (245).

The next morning, Tim texts that he’s been cleared to go home and asks Bud to pick him up at noon. Bud gets Tim’s car and makes a detour to Fascati Pizza in Brooklyn Heights to buy Tim’s favorite food for lunch. He reflects on how small, random choices can alter the course of a life. While Bud is sitting in the car with the pizza, he learns that Tim has died. Numbly, he calls his sister, Louisa, who begins screaming.

Bud goes to Methodist Hospital to identify the body. A hospital employee gives him a plastic bag with Tim’s clothes and escorts him to the morgue. In a state of shock, Bud sees Tim’s body, which looks peaceful, almost smiling, but also oddly unlike himself: “Where was he, I wondered in a kind of confused shock. Because this wasn't him. This bluish-gray body devoid of life. Where was my friend?” (249). He formally identifies Tim.

Leo finds Bud on the stoop and comforts him, explaining that he keeps his deceased loved ones alive in his mind. Clara stays over, and the next morning Esther sobs in Bud’s arms.

Bud goes to his office and finds a new, young employee—the “bro”—at his desk. When the bro calls him the “drunk-obit guy,” Bud grabs him by the throat. Howard appears, and Bud explains that he needs to write Tim’s obituary. Tuan hands Bud a draft he has already started. Bud apologizes to the bro, who threatens to go to his father and sue Bud. In response, Howard fires the bro; coworkers applaud.

Tim’s funeral instructions included a new pair of P.F. Flyers. Bud brings them to Aldo, the funeral director at Giordano Funeral Home. Days later, Aldo allows Bud into the preparation room and explains the embalming process. Aldo says that God, the deceased, and he are in the room as he works and that all the deceased matter to him. Bud puts the sneakers on Tim’s feet. He considers tying the laces together, imagining Tim, now able to run, tripping over his shoes: “‘That sonuvabitch,’ he would have said, smiling” (260).

At the wake, Bud and Louisa greet a long line of friends. The gathering becomes a celebration with stories, laughter, and wine. The morning of the funeral, Buckley from HR calls to say Bud is officially “alive” again, so his termination can proceed.

The funeral takes place in an Episcopal church whose starry ceiling Tim helped restore. Bud gives a eulogy: He lists the strangers whose funerals he and Tim attended, admitting that those deaths did not affect him but that Tim’s did, deeply. He goes off-script to explain how Tim saved his life by showing him how to live. He concludes by asking the congregation what they will do with the gift of being alive.

At the reception, Howard and Tuan embrace him. Louisa stays for several days before returning to Los Angeles. She gives Bud a letter from Tim revealing that he has left his house to Bud and asking him to rent out the apartment cheaply to someone in need, keep the salon tradition alive, and be happy.

Before Bud’s misconduct hearing, Clara kisses Bud and tells him that the worst has already happened: “You died already” (271). Tuan escorts him to a conference room where Megan, Beth, Buckley, Howard, and corporate counsel, Martine, await. Megan reads the list of violations and officially terminates Bud. Beth notes that the decision wasn’t unanimous. When Martine threatens legal action, Bud angrily responds that they can’t hurt him more than he’s already been hurt. He apologizes for his “stupidity” but, as he’s leaving, delivers a passionate speech about how the company does obituary writing wrong: “[P]eople read it. And think…nothing. Because it was cheap and easy. It didn’t get to who they were” (274). He argues that they must attend wakes and funerals to truly capture a person’s essence. He illustrates his point with a hypothetical story of an ordinary man about to die whose full life deserves to be honored.

The next day, Bud drives Clara to the airport for her year-long trip to Bhutan. Before they leave her apartment, she leads him to the bedroom. Bud reflects that the experience is about emotional connection and love rather than just sex. At the airport security area, during an emotional goodbye, Clara asks what he would say if it were the last time they’d see each other. After cracking a joke—“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening” (278)—he tells her that he loves her; after a pause, she says that she loves him too. She then walks through security without looking back.

During the summer, Bud copes with grief by running extensively. He looks after Tim’s empty apartment, reads books from Tim’s collection, and occasionally calls Tim’s phone to hear his voicemail. In late summer, Tuan invites Bud to Fire Island for three days with his friends Ian, Lucas, Patrick, and Ryan. Bud relaxes, swims, and joins their dinner parties and beach bonfires, finding their happiness and confidence contagious: “I […] watched these men who had been bullied as children, taunted as teenagers, had to hide their true selves, but who were, now, here, tanned and laughing, fully themselves, inviting me, daring me, to join them” (281). When Tuan expresses interest in Lucas, Bud tells him that Lucas isn’t good enough for him. Tuan admits that he’s lonely, but Bud insists that he shouldn’t settle. He then apologizes to Tuan for his past behavior at work, including the repercussions of his suspension and firing.

After Labor Day, Bud moves into Tim’s apartment. He rents his old apartment to Mariel, a woman from Honduras who cleans hotel rooms and has a six-year-old son, William, charging her only $300 monthly. He plans to host a new salon.

Howard meets Bud and offers him a job creating “Life Stories,” an in-depth obituary feature inspired by Bud’s eulogy. Bud accepts and suggests that Tuan work with him. His first assignment is Professor Avner Chartoff. Bud travels to Scarsdale and interviews the professor’s widow, Greta. She reveals that she still makes eight cups of coffee every morning out of habit and shares a story about her husband touching 2,000-year-old pigment on excavated frescoes and feeling a connection to people who lived millennia before.

Leo’s mother asks Bud to participate in show-and-tell at school. Leo gives a presentation explaining that obituaries aren’t sad because they celebrate the good things in a person’s life.

Bud notes that he sometimes sees a cardinal outside his window; he reads about its symbolism as a spiritual messenger between Earth and the spirit world. He reflects that he still doesn’t truly understand death but suggests that it involves “lov[ing] the miracle of existence” (288). On a cold December morning in Tim’s apartment, Bud prepares to write an obituary, remembering Tim’s philosophy that everyone is an obituary writer, creating their own life story every day.