As darkness approaches, Eliot arrives at 431 Porter Way in Maine. The cottage sits at the end of a gravel driveway. He parks beside Holly’s car and walks around to find Claire, Holly, and Michelle seated in Adirondack chairs on a bluff overlooking the water.

The women react with distress. Claire begins to cry. Eliot crouches before her and asks why she did not tell him what she wanted. Claire protests that he would not let her leave the house or use the ramp. Holly interjects that Eliot treats Claire as if she is already dead, pointing to his reluctance to let her go out for lemon cake. It seems, Holly says, that Claire is not allowed to live—only to wait for death.

Enraged, Eliot calls their actions outrageous and possibly criminal, convinced Holly orchestrated the arrangement to replicate the end of Susan Simmons’s life. He tells both women that they only remain friends with each other because of Claire. As Claire struggles to stand, Eliot shoves Michelle away and yells at them both to leave. He then lifts an empty Adirondack chair over his head and throws it over the bluff onto the rocks below.

Overwhelmed by shame, Eliot descends to the beach and attempts to collect the broken pieces. When he returns, Claire answers the door, leads him to a small bedroom, and tells him to shower. Afterward, he wraps himself in a bedspread. Holly and Michelle leave. Eliot and Claire try to have a snack, but she is too exhausted. She tells him she just wanted to come back to Maine one more time, then apologizes, saying she does not know what she was thinking.

Eliot wakes at 2:20 am to find Claire in severe pain with a crushing headache. He gives her medication. She says she is dying and it might be soon, then tells him to inform the children they will decide by tomorrow—without specifying what the decision is—before falling back asleep.

When Claire wakes again, she is more alert but has no memory of her earlier statements. Tensions escalate as Eliot presses her. Claire reveals that Holly predicted they would fight. Eliot asks what was wrong with him that made her want to leave. Claire says that it wasn’t about him; she just felt like leaving. She admits that imagining how her death would unfold was a form of denial.

Claire then delivers a painful truth: Eliot could not have tolerated being present for her death. She did not want the burden of witnessing his breakdown and feeling responsible for his recovery. As evidence, she points to the morning he stumbled out in distress after finding her awake with her friends, and to the day he learned about her brain lesions and cried alone in his car rather than with her. Holly and Michelle, she says, cry with her. Eliot hides his grief.

Claire says she wants to go home. Before they leave, Eliot asks who will be with her for the rest. She assures him that he will be there, along with the children, and Holly and Michelle. She apologizes, and Eliot tells her there is nothing to forgive. They drive home with Claire sleeping most of the way, stopping for blueberries at farm stands.

The chapter opens with a flash-forward to the months and years after Claire’s death, describing Eliot’s grief, his cooking projects, and a future dinner party with friends.

Back in the present, Eliot and Claire arrive home in the early evening. He discards the lamb he had been preparing before his trip to Maine. Claire takes a bath and wants her bed elevated so she can text the children, but falls asleep before finishing a message to Abby.

She remains in bed the following days as Holly and Michelle visit and the hospice increases its frequency. The hospice nurse tells Abby that Claire has days to weeks remaining. Claire often appears to be sleeping with her eyes open. When she wakes at night, she speaks as if dreaming. One day she asks to be taken to the kitchen to find a bowl from Finland, which Eliot does not tell her broke years ago. Another day, she wants her mother’s bumblebee earrings, which she gives to Holly and Michelle, while Eliot runs an errand.

Claire can only manage small amounts of applesauce, and Eliot must hold her head to position a straw for water. One evening, more alert, she thanks him for talking to Holly’s husband about her and says she is not scared—she will simply slip away to nowhere. Eliot responds by paraphrasing the poem John sent him, describing the afterlife as about “a bright nowhere […] of broad fields and sunlight” (244).

Josh arrives and, enlivened by his presence, Claire asks to be taken outside one last time. She stops eating entirely. Eliot had expected to feel alienated and want to flee, but it is not like that at all. Her hands come together in an unusual way, and she stops speaking. Abby returns. Claire is in her final hours, and everyone takes turns administering morphine.