When Thomas calls to tell Trey about Gabriel’s brain tumor, Trey is devastated. Specialists in Madison confirm that the diagnosis is terminal and any treatment would be fatal. As Gabriel deteriorates, Trey finds visits too painful and stops going, but he returns when Thomas tells him Gabriel has been asking for him, taking weekly overnight shifts at his bedside.

During one vigil, Gabriel wakes in pain and tells Trey he was dreaming about his college girlfriend, Bella—a woman he loved but broke up with before leaving for London, wanting to focus on his career. He calls this a mistake. Trey urges him to call her; Gabriel refuses without explaining why. The next morning, Trey asks Thomas for Bella’s last name, which Thomas recalls is Alvarez. He tells Trey that she went home to California after she and Gabriel broke up. Despite Merryn’s skepticism, Trey searches online, finds Isabella Alvarez—an elementary education graduate from the University of Wisconsin—and contacts her. She responds that same afternoon.

Billy is heartbroken and angry at the injustice of a good young man dying. Making matters worse, conspiracy theories fill the internet, and paparazzi crowd the road near Thomas’s house. During a Friday fish fry at Billy’s tavern, someone suggests creating a roadblock. The idea gains quick support, and Billy contacts the sheriff’s office, whose deputy reluctantly agrees to ignore traffic complaints while warning that any violence will result in arrests.

By the next morning, community members have blocked the road in both directions with vehicles and farm equipment. Most paparazzi leave, but two photographers drive around the blockade and set up across from Thomas’s driveway. When confronted, one reveals a holstered pistol. The standoff escalates—their Jeep is scratched, and one of their phones is destroyed—until the photographers back down and leave. The community maintains the blockade for three days and continues monitoring the area afterward.

As summer heat arrives, Gabriel becomes completely bedridden, and his pain intensifies. A visiting nurse prescribes pain medication, and Josiah improvises practical solutions for Gabriel’s care, including a custom bedpan and wheels added to his bed. Friends continue visiting, though Gabriel is often too weak to interact. Overwhelmed, Hannah tearfully tells Josiah that she can no longer provide adequate care for Gabriel by herself.

The next day, coordinated by Abiah, dozens of Amish women from multiple districts begin arriving in shifts, washing, feeding, and comforting Gabriel, singing hymns and reading his favorite childhood animal stories. When his pain worsens, the nurse begins administering morphine through an IV drip.

On a bright late-July afternoon, a young woman with a toddler boy knocks on the door. She introduces herself as Bella Alvarez and says the boy, Raphael, is Gabriel’s son. Hannah is overwhelmed with emotion and embraces Bella warmly.

Raphael’s obvious resemblance to Gabriel dispels any doubt about his parentage. The arrival of Bella and Raphael briefly revitalizes Gabriel. He spends hours alone with Bella and frequently embraces his son. After a few days, his condition worsens again, and he sleeps most of the time. Bella joins the rotation of women caring for him.

Thomas observes the compassionate Amish care and feels ashamed for having sent his own mother to a nursing home. Josiah confides that he cannot bring himself to build Gabriel’s coffin. He has asked Abram Glick to do it instead. Josiah has also arranged for Gabriel to be buried in the English Cemetery of Peace alongside his mother, Rachel, and across from his brother, Jasper. Hannah, Josiah notes, has refused to discuss funeral details.

On the morning of August 2, Gabriel lies close to death, attended by Hannah, Thomas, Abiah, and Josiah. Around three-thirty, Gabriel begins speaking in his sleep in an unknown but joyful-sounding language, then starts humming melodically. Suddenly, thousands of birds of all species arrive outside the window and begin singing together in a harmonious chorus. As the birdsong fades and the birds depart, farm and wild animals from the surrounding area begin calling out. Josiah suggests moving Gabriel’s bed outside.

They wheel him onto the patio, and Hannah describes the chorus to him. He smiles. Wild animals emerge from the woods without fear. Thousands of insects swarm, followed by tens of thousands of fireflies that rise, form a brilliant cloud, and descend to cover Gabriel and his bed, glowing so intensely the watchers must look away. The fireflies ascend together, and Hannah knows Gabriel’s soul has departed with them.

Thomas walks through the yard collecting feathers left by the birds, distributes some to the others, and lays the most beautiful ones on Gabriel’s chest. The four of them stand in silence around his body as dawn breaks.

Word of Gabriel’s death spreads through the community, with urgent reminders to keep it off social media. The morning that he hears the news, Billy drives to Stella’s house and proposes marriage. She accepts.

Three days later, Gabriel’s funeral is held in a secluded field on the Fisher farm, advertised as a barn raising to mislead paparazzi. Hundreds of Amish and English mourners gather around Gabriel’s oversized open casket. The service opens with hymns led by an Amish minister, followed by a brief sermon and eulogies from English friends. Charlie Mayfield reads To an Athlete Dying Young; Trey and Thomas offer emotional tributes. Billy stands to speak but is overcome and tells a joke instead. Oliver Edwards concludes with a rendition of “Amazing Grace” as barn swallows circle overhead.

After a final viewing, Gabriel is carried by a hay wagon to the Cemetery of Peace and buried beside Rachel. His grave is marked only by an unadorned piece of limestone bearing a fossil that resembles a cross.

Hannah reflects on her life of faith, acknowledging that while she often failed tests, those failures brought unexpected wisdom and empathy. In the days following the funeral, the family tends to Gabriel’s few possessions—his prosthetic leg donated, his clothes boxed, his shoes returned to Abram Glick, where the leather will be reused to make other shoes.

Hannah has a tearful goodbye with Thomas, embracing him and reflecting that in over 50 years of marriage, she has never held another man this way. She tells him she must stay with Josiah. She finally steps away, dons her kapp, and walks to where Josiah waits with the buggy.

During the moonlit ride home, Hannah holds Josiah’s hand and appreciates his silence as an undeserved gift of forgiveness. Arriving home, she finds Bella and Raphael waiting at the kitchen table. After Raphael finishes his bedtime snack, Hannah takes him outside to catch fireflies in a jar.

Thomas moves through late summer in mourning and distraction. He discovers that Hannah left him her comb and a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems; she marked a poem about love and separation. He fishes frequently on the Mecan River, often with Trey, who gave up coaching after Gabriel’s death. In late August, Thomas’s mother passes away; he collects her ashes and scatters them in Lake Michigan from a borrowed kayak.

Thomas visits Hannah one last time and learns that Gabriel left his money to Bella, who has accepted a teaching job and will be staying in the area with Raphael. He tells Hannah that he is leaving Lakota. When he asks for her interpretation of the events surrounding Gabriel’s death, she calls it a miracle; he offers a scientific explanation. He realizes that remaining near Hannah would be too painful, and the visit solidifies his decision to go.

Thomas puts his house on the market and, with Trey’s help, finds a cabin on the Missouri River in Montana. When his realtor brings a cash offer that is $10,000 below the asking price from a young elementary school teacher, Thomas realizes that it is Bella and instructs the agent to accept.

In early October, before dawn, he finishes loading a rental trailer and drives away from Lakota for the last time. At the age of 71, watching the sunrise in his rearview mirror as he begins a 1,200-mile journey across unfamiliar territory, he feels that his life is just beginning.