The next day, Lisey can’t stop thinking about Amanda’s list. She goes to the barn and begins looking at the magazines. When she finds one from 1988, she recalls that Scott was shot and nearly killed by a “madman” on a college campus in Nashville. She finds a photograph from that day, with Scott standing alongside a professor, Roger Dashmiel, and a graduate student, Tony Eddington. On the back of the picture is a note from Dashmiel giving Scott Tony’s name and address. The caption claims that Tony saved Scott’s life that day, but Lisey reflects on what really happened.

In a flashback to 1988, before leaving for Nashville, Lisey accidentally knocks over the toothbrush holder, and it shatters on the bathroom floor. She sees it as a bad omen, remembering her grandmother’s words, “Broken glass in the morning, broken hearts at night” (30).

In Nashville, Scott does a groundbreaking ceremony for a new library with the University of Tennessee, where he shovels a patch of dirt and then gives a speech. As he talks, Lisey notices a man, later identified as Gerd Allen Cole, mumbling to himself. After the speech, Scott hands the shovel to Lisey, then begins walking away with Dashmiel and Tony. Lisey is overcome with a sense of dread, remembering the omen, then spots Cole standing alone as the crowd moves around him. Time slows for Lisey as he approaches Scott, pulls out a gun, and shoots him. When he starts to shoot again, Lisey hits the gun and then Cole’s face with the shovel. She hands the shovel to Tony and goes after Scott, who has stumbled into the parking lot. The photographer gets a photo of Tony holding the shovel, and he is documented as the hero.

Lisey goes to Scott, who was shot in the chest. A campus security guard informs her that he called an ambulance. Scott tries to talk to Lisey. He tells her that he can see the thing that has always haunted him approaching: “[T]he long boy” or “the thing with the endless piebald side” (48). He questions whether to call out to it, then makes a rasping noise, which horrifies Lisey. She urges him to ignore the thing in the darkness and stay with her. Finally, the ambulance arrives.

Back in the present, Lisey closes the book from 1988. Upset at the memory and with a headache, she decides to leave the barn. On the way out, she hears the phone ring inside the small office she was constructing for herself when Scott died. A male voice leaves a message saying that he’ll try again, and, for reasons Lisey can’t explain, the voice “chills” her.

Lisey falls asleep in her bedroom. She dreams of being in the hospital where Scott went after he was shot. She floats near the ceiling on a magic carpet made from a flour sack. She sees her younger self sitting by Scott’s bedside. She remembers the memory: Scott wakes up and comments on how hot it is, while she worries about whether he remembers talking about the long boy and his presence. She screams out to her younger self, insisting that she shouldn’t let him pretend that he doesn’t remember the long boy. She doesn’t hear herself; instead, Scott turns to her and blows, sending the magic carpet spiraling and Lisey falling.

Lisey wakes up in her bed, the dream already fading from her mind. However, she now has a sense of certainty that she needs to find the shovel from 1988. She questions why aloud, and her husband answers, insisting that she find it but not explaining why.

The next day, Lisey cannot stop thinking about when Scott was shot despite her best efforts to distract herself. Early in the evening, she hears Scott’s voice telling her to find the shovel if she wants to stop thinking about it.

Lisey looks through the barn. The phone in Lisey’s locked office rings again, giving her a sense of foreboding. It is her sister, Darla, who tells her that she is at Amanda’s house. The neighbor called Darla when she heard Amanda smashing and breaking things over an ex-boyfriend returning to town. When Darla found her, she had self-inflicted cuts on her body. According to Amanda’s therapist, she is going through one of her stages of “semi-catatonia” (69). Darla urges Lisey to come over.

As they finish talking, Lisey spots the silver shovel leaning against the wall. While she plays with it, she is drawn to a box nearby marked as the early part of Scott’s career. Inside, she is shocked to find what appears to be a completed copy of the book Ike Comes Home, which Scott had never published or even talked to Lisey about. While she contemplates where it came from, the phone rings again.

The man on the phone initially refuses to give Lisey his name, then makes up the name “Zack McCool.” He brings up Professor Woodbody, then warns Lisey that, when he is hired to do a job, he gets it done or else people end up hurt. Lisey immediately ends the conversation, telling Zack to leave her alone. She ignores the phone when it rings again.

Before Lisey leaves the barn, she lifts the first page of Ike Comes Home. The second page reads, “Ike came home with a boom, and everything was fine. BOOL! THE END!” (80). She recognizes Scott’s word “bool” to mean an adventure or puzzle, then laughs to herself as she realizes that all the other pages in the box are blank. She wonders if the joke is supposed to be on her or people like Woodbody. She then has the unsettling thought that, for Scott to make the joke, he could have known that he was dying; however, she quickly pushes away the idea.

Lisey locks the barn and then the house. She gets in the car to drive to Amanda’s with the shovel still in her hand and Amanda’s notebook in her back pocket.

As Lisey drives, she has flashes of memory of the first bool with Scott, which involved Scott covered in blood, but she represses the memories. When she gets to Amanda’s, Darla is waiting for her outside, covered in blood. She takes her to Amanda, who is sitting at the kitchen table with fresh cuts on her hand made from a broken teacup. Lisey approaches Amanda and repeatedly tries to get her attention. After a moment, Amanda finally looks at Lisey and says only one word: “Bool.”

Lisey and Darla debate what to do about Amanda. Although Lisey lies and says she is fine, she is overwhelmed by fear and unease. She wonders if everything is connected, including Zack’s phone call, Scott’s manuscript, and Amanda, then worries if it is somehow tied to the long boy. They decide to take Amanda to Stephens Hospital in the small town of Norway nearby. They discuss whether it’s better for the hospital to keep her for a day or two to watch over her, or if they would prefer she come home. In the end, they decide to do their best to make it look like Amanda is not a danger to herself so that she can come home.

Lisey helps Amanda undress and then get into the shower. As she does, she thinks of an acronym Scott used to use, “SOWISA,” which means “Strap On Whenever It Seems Appropriate” (95), to refer to preparing for the worst. In the shower, Amanda finally starts to engage with Lisey and come out of her catatonia.

At the hospital, the doctor sees Amanda while Darla and Lisey wait in the waiting room. When Amanda returns, she tells them that the doctor couldn’t stitch her hands, so he gave her cream to put on them, but that she is being sent home. The nurse then calls Lisey in the back to see the doctor. He explains that, while he can tell that Amanda has self-harmed before, he does not think that she is having suicidal thoughts. She thinks of Scott’s words for his own suicidal ideation, “blood-bool,” and assures the doctor that she will stay with Amanda.

Back at home, Lisey says goodbye to Darla and sits in the living room with Amanda. She starts to ask about bools, then stops when she looks at Amanda, who is focused and present again. Instead, Lisey offers her hot cocoa, and they go to bed. In the middle of the night, Lisey wakes up in the dark. She has a vivid memory of Scott from their early 20s when they first started dating; it was the first time he went on a bool.

In a flashback, Lisey waits all night for Scott to get home so they can go to the movie theater. Darla calls and yells at Lisey for not being there for them lately, especially because Amanda is having a mental health crisis. Lisey apologizes but is inwardly angry, as her life is difficult as well. She works full-time as a waitress, as Scott is beginning as a writer. As the night drags on, she knows that he is out drinking with his friends. When he finally shows up after 11:00 PM, he is intoxicated. She yells at him, insulting nearly everything about him, noting to herself how she intended to hurt him. Near the end, Scott simply asks her to wait, then smiles. He runs into the yard and disappears out the gate.

Lisey stands for a long time looking into the yard, contemplating whether to search for him or call his name. She hears a loud crash, then Scott reappears. He extends his arm to her, and it is covered in blood and severely lacerated. Lisey realizes that Scott must have put his hand through the wall of the greenhouse. He offers it to her, telling her that he went on a “blood-bool” as a form of apology. Sounding like a small child, he tells Lisey, “If you take a bool—especially a blood-bool—then sorry’s okay. Daddy said so. Daddy tole Paul n me over n over” (115).

Inside, Lisey helps Scott clean his wound. She realizes that she knows very little about his past, just as he knows nothing about hers. She tries to get him to talk about his family. He tells her that his mother died giving birth to him and that his brother, Paul, is also dead. He also tells her that families don’t matter and can be left behind as they build their life together. Lisey realizes, in that moment, that she loves Scott despite the difficulties she knows his mental health will pose in their relationship.

Lisey wakes up in the middle of the night, and Scott is not in bed. She gets up and checks the bathroom and the house for him. When she returns, he is sound asleep in bed, and she wonders if she imagined he was gone. Later, she wakes again, this time to Scott talking. He tells her that he wants to marry her, as she knows him and loves him for more than his writing. She agrees.

In the morning, Scott is already awake, cooking breakfast. He again brings up marriage, and Lisey decides that she truly does want to marry him. He also remarks on his cuts, noting how they don’t look that bad. To Lisey’s shock, they are much smaller than she thought and already scabbing. She wonders how it’s possible for someone to heal that fast.

Lisey returns to the present but struggles to grasp whether the person sleeping next to her is Scott or Amanda. She hesitates, then speaks to the person’s back, asking why Amanda mentioned a bool. The person replies in Amanda’s voice, but Lisey recognizes the words and inflection as belonging to Scott. The voice tells her that she will have a blood-bool soon, but that she is already on a regular bool. It will take her “behind the purple,” and she has “already found the first three stations”; it ends with “a drink” as its prize (131). 

Just as daylight comes through the window, Lisey tries to ask when the blood-bool will come but gets no answer. Angry, she begins yelling, then flips the person over. She sees in Amanda’s eyes that she has returned to her catatonic state.