Friends gather at Richard Campo's home to honor Nico with a life celebration instead of attending his church funeral.

Yale receives a letter from Fiona's elderly great-aunt Nora, offering her valuable Paris art collection to the Brigg Gallery.

Yale and Cecily drive to Wisconsin where Nora formally agrees to donate her art collection to the Brigg Gallery.

Terrence and Fiona sign legal power of attorney papers at a dinner party, granting Fiona authority over Terrence's medical care.

Charlie's mother Teresa reveals to Yale that Charlie has tested HIV positive after sleeping with Julian.

Yale flees to Terrence's apartment and learns that Terrence knew all along about Charlie and Julian's sexual encounter.

Terrence dies suddenly, and Yale packs his belongings and ends his relationship with Charlie after confronting him at the funeral.

Yale is fired from Northwestern after the true value of Nora's art reaches Chuck Donovan and triggers his rage.

Yale discovers at a gay pride parade that Roman has been sexually active with multiple men, including gallery director Bill.

Yale tests positive for HIV, his infection traced back to his affair with Roman.

Yale visits a deteriorating Charlie in the hospital and silently forgives him by gently feeding him drops of water.

Fiona travels to Paris and hires a private detective named Arnaud to search for her estranged daughter, Claire.

Fiona confronts Kurt directly and discovers that Claire joined the cult entirely of her own free will.

Fiona is reunited with Julian at Richard's Paris apartment, shocked to discover he survived the AIDS crisis.

Richard's thirty-year memorial art show brings Fiona, Claire, and Julian together as footage of their Chicago friends plays on loop.

Yale Tishman, a development officer at a Chicago art gallery, mourns his friend Nico's death from AIDS alongside a tight-knit circle of gay men and their allies. His career flourishes when Fiona's great-aunt Nora donates a priceless Parisian art collection to the gallery, but his personal life collapses when he discovers that his partner Charlie secretly contracted HIV. After leaving Charlie, losing his job, and becoming infected himself through an affair with a misrepresented intern named Roman, Yale quietly forgives Charlie on his deathbed. Thirty years later, Fiona travels to Paris searching for her estranged daughter Claire, carrying decades of survivor's guilt over the deaths of her Chicago friends. As Fiona tracks down Claire and confronts the truth about their fractured relationship, she is stunned to discover that Julian, long assumed dead, survived the epidemic. The two timelines converge at Richard's memorial art show, where Fiona, Claire, and Julian find a fragile but genuine path toward healing.

The headline story of AIDS, art, and survival.

Charlie accuses Yale of sneaking upstairs to sleep with Teddy at Nico's life celebration, despite Yale's firm denial.

Cecily propositions Yale for cocaine and companionship at a Door County motel after drinking several martinis during their Wisconsin trip.

Yale and Charlie attend Julian's all-male Hamlet production, and Asher reveals at intermission that Teddy was violently attacked.

Yale breaks down crying at the Howard Brown Foundation fundraiser, exclaiming that he is thirty-one and all his friends are dying.

Bill assigns Roman as Yale's intern at a dinner party at Bill's home, and Charlie jokes that Roman must be a Mormon virgin.

Nora reveals she is dying of congestive heart failure and urgently wants to see the gallery open before she dies.

Cecily tells Yale he must leave her apartment because her ex-husband has threatened to sue for custody of their son, Kurt.

Fiona and Yale rush to Terrence's abandoned apartment and rescue Roscoe the cat, who is barely alive after weeks alone.

Julian moves into the Sharps' condo with Yale and reveals that Charlie routinely had anonymous sex with strangers in public restrooms.

Julian leaves for Puerto Rico expecting to die there, giving Yale his dental floss, which Yale uses piece by piece each day.

Yale marches in an ACT UP protest alongside Fiona and Asher before police violently arrest him and break one of his ribs.

Fiona meets photographer Jake Austen on her flight to Paris and reluctantly gives him Serge's contact information.

Arnaud shows Fiona photographs of Kurt with an unknown woman, suggesting Claire may no longer be in a relationship with him.

The Paris terrorist attacks erupt while Fiona searches for Claire, and Cecily decides to fly to Paris to help.

Fiona babysits Nicolette with Cecily and reveals the guilt she has always carried over Yale dying the day Claire was born.

Beneath the major plot events of the AIDS crisis, a web of smaller but equally significant moments defines the lives of Yale, Fiona, and their chosen family in Chicago. Charlie's jealousy and Yale's encounters with his attractive friends reveal the tensions simmering beneath their troubled relationship, while Bill's assignment of Roman as Yale's intern quietly plants the seeds of Yale's eventual infection. As friends like Terrence and Julian face their diagnoses, the group clings to one another through dinners, rescues of abandoned pets, and late-night confessions about shame and desire. Yale's homelessness after his breakup with Charlie forces him from apartment to apartment, mapping a path of grief and survivorship across the city. Fiona's arrival in Paris thirty years later unfolds through chance encounters, a quiet detective investigation, and the jarring interruption of terrorist attacks that refocus her sense of urgency. By the time she finally babysits her granddaughter Nicolette alongside Cecily, Fiona begins to understand that healing requires confronting not only grief for the dead but guilt toward the living.

The friendships, losses, and small moments that shaped the epidemic.

Richard's photo slideshow of Nico's life overwhelms Yale with grief, causing him to retreat upstairs and mourn alone during the celebration.

Yale receives the mailed photographs of Nora's collection and Bill confirms the artwork far exceeds everyone's initial expectations.

Charlie vanishes for hours after learning at an Out Loud Chicago staff meeting that Julian has tested positive for HIV.

Debra reveals to Yale that Ranko Novak was Nora's longtime romantic partner, explaining Nora's fierce devotion to preserving his artwork.

The Sharps agree to finance authentication of Nora's art, and Richard privately reveals to Yale that Bill once frequented gay bars.

Nora tells Yale she chose him for her collection because she sees his dying generation as her own Lost Generation reborn.

Yale accidentally blurts out the full two-million-dollar value of Nora's art to Debra, who furiously expels them from the house.

Dr. Cheng calls Yale to confirm his HIV test came back negative, admitting he lied about not planning to call.

Nora passes away from congestive heart failure before she can attend the gallery show she devoted her final years to creating.

Asher tells Yale he is moving to New York to pursue gay rights activism, ending any possibility of romance between them.

Fiona gets drunk at Corinne's party and accidentally breaks a champagne glass in her hand while grieving her dead friends aloud.

Fiona and Arnaud search Kurt's apartment and find a photograph of Nicolette whose eyes strikingly resemble Nico's.

Kurt tells Fiona that Damian may have told Claire her birth was the worst day of Fiona's life.

Fiona's therapist urges her to let go of all blame entirely in her fractured relationship with Claire.

Claire confesses at Richard's memorial art show that she always wished she could have been Yale's reincarnation, to absolve Fiona's guilt.

The Great Believers is driven by a series of pivotal discoveries and emotional reversals that shift the characters' understanding of themselves and each other. Early revelations—the hidden quality of Nora's art collection, the secret connection between Nora and her lover Ranko Novak, and Charlie's panicked reaction to Julian's diagnosis—expose the layers of concealment running beneath every relationship. Nora's declaration that she chose Yale because she recognizes his dying generation as her own Lost Generation reborn gives the novel its moral and emotional core. Yale's negative HIV test offers a false reprieve, while the eventual revelation of Roman's deception confirms the tragic cost of assumptions about monogamy and shame. Thirty years later, Fiona's turning points arrive through uncomfortable confrontations—a broken champagne glass, a face-to-face meeting with Kurt, and a therapist's insistence that she release all blame. The final revelation belongs to Claire, whose confession that she wished she could be Yale's reincarnation opens the door to the healing both mother and daughter have desperately needed.