The narrative shifts to Jamie’s perspective. His interest in the military was awakened when he was a child; by the time he was close to finishing high school, he was interested in enlisting or applying to the Naval Academy. However, he knew that Joan expected him to go to a prestigious college, so he enrolled to study business at Penn. After graduation, he took a job working in finance in New York City. Jamie witnessed the events of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and he was prompted to change his life: A year later, he quit his job and enlisted, beginning the training to become a US Navy SEAL. Joan is shocked and distressed when her son shares this news with her.

Jamie endures the intense training required of new recruits, but the experience builds his confidence. He also becomes close friends with a fellow recruit named Nick. Around 2008, while deployed in Iraq, Jamie is injured and Nick is killed.

After his injury, Jamie is eventually transferred to a hospital in California. Joan visits him regularly and is startled to learn that Jamie is already thinking about returning to military service. Joan is secretly relieved that her son is home but also feels guilty about Nick’s death. Joan has previously met Nick’s mother, Carly, and she sends a letter of condolence. When he is released from hospital, Jamie moves into an apartment nearby. He is discharged from the army due to his injuries and begins working at a technology company. Jamie sometimes comes to the Satisfaction Café.

Trevor (the friend that Joan first met through Bill, and with whom she briefly considers having an affair) begins visiting the café. He is now divorced but has a new girlfriend. Joan confides in Trevor her worries about her son, and the two of them gradually become close. Trevor eventually becomes single and he and Joan occasionally sleep together, but don’t pursue a traditional relationship. They are mostly friends and Joan sometimes feels a conflicted sense of loss that the two of them could not pursue a romantic relationship at a different life stage.

Lee begins dating a man named Marc, whom she met on the trip to Japan. They become engaged and Marc wants her to move to London with him; Lee is unsure and expresses her hesitations to Jamie. Lee agrees to move with Marc to London; at first, she feels aimless and lost since she doesn’t have a job or any friends there. After living there for a few months, Lee phones Joan to say that she will be spending Thanksgiving with Marc’s family and is not sure about her Christmas plans. Joan is hurt and implies that Lee is becoming too dependent on Marc and his family.

Lee and Marc travel to Virginia to stay with his father and stepmother; Marc comes from a very wealthy family and adores his father. During the weekend, Marc leaves for a brief work trip and Lee stays alone with his father and stepmother. Late that night, Marc’s father, Peter, comes into Lee’s bedroom and makes sexual overtures. She shoves him away and as soon as Marc returns, Lee tells him what happened. To Lee’s surprise, he isn’t outraged and implies that he wants her to overlook the incident.

Joan is surprised when Lee tells her that she has broken up with Marc and will be moving back home. Neither Misty nor Jamie will give Joan any information about what happened although Joan deduces that something must have happened over Thanksgiving. Joan is happy to see Lee and Jamie spending more time together, but she is puzzled that both of her children seem adrift and worries that she has not set them up to be happy. Joan is also kept busy and preoccupied by her work with the café, which is bustling and profitable. Sometimes, the family visits High Rock Park, where the gate leading to the dangerous clifftop trail has still not been repaired. To the amusement of her children, Joan continues filling out cards asking for the park staff to repair the gate so that no one mistakenly wanders onto a hazardous trail.

On the surface, Jamie adjusts well to his new life after leaving the military, but he often feels aimless and isolated. His job at Atom, a successful tech company, sometimes seems purposeless; he begins dating Chloe, a woman he had previously been in a relationship with while working in New York. Chloe is sometimes frustrated by Jamie’s ambivalence and unwillingness to advance the relationship. Jamie notices that one of his colleagues at Atom, Ellison, sometimes dresses in women’s clothing. Ellison leaves the company and ends up working as a host at the Satisfaction Café; Jamie gets to know him and hears about how Ellison felt alienated at Atom due to the response to him exploring his gender identity. Ellison tells Jamie that he enjoys working as a host, and that Jamie might consider it as well, since people would be curious to hear about Jamie’s experiences in Iraq.

One day, Lee surprises Jamie at his office and explains that she has also been hired at Atom. Lee is amused that she’s been hired even though she understands very little about the job or company and this prompts Jamie to realize that he also doesn’t understand his job and finds it to be meaningless. As Jamie begins to break down and weep, Lee hurries her brother into a private room.

Joan celebrates the third anniversary of the café being open. Joan is proud but sometimes also feels a sense of dread and worry, even though she is aware that her life has many positives. One of Joan’s former friends from her graduate student days, a woman named Kailie, becomes a regular at the café, and Joan feels kindly toward her even though Kailie stopped speaking to her after Joan’s divorce from Milton. Lee suggests that Joan spend more time with Jamie and Joan worriedly invites Jamie to visit the café more often. Ellison is still working there, and he is very loyal to Joan because she has been non-judgmental about whatever clothing he wears.

Chloe breaks up with Jamie. Ellison sometimes badgers Jamie into spending time with him; one weekend, they drive into San Francisco together so that Ellison can try on a pair of shoes. On the drive home, Ellison irritates Jamie by insisting that Joan has been acting strangely. For example, Joan (who has always loved driving) has told Ellison that she no longer wants to drive.

Jamie and Lee insist that Joan visit a doctor; she is frustrated and resentful but becomes worried when she finds herself unable to draw a clock (a cognitive test often used to screen for dementia). A short time later, Joan is diagnosed with an unspecified progressive neurological disease. Lee and Jamie suggest that one of them can move in with her, but Joan is uncomfortable with the idea of her children caring for her. A few months pass, during which Joan continues to live independently and some of their worries recede. She confides in Patty who helps her at the café. However, Joan realizes that she is forgetting more and more. She also suffers a fall at home one day. Although she still sees Trevor regularly, Joan knows she can’t rely on him.

Eventually Joan realizes she can no longer reliably manage the café. She is surprised when Jamie volunteers to run the business; Joan doesn’t know that Jamie quit his job at Atom a few months earlier. Jamie finds a quiet satisfaction in running the café, although it is also exhausting. Jamie and Lee make an effort to spend a lot of time with Joan; one day, they go hiking at High Rock Park and Joan now seems resigned to the lack of gate or signage for the cliffside path. Joan increasingly contemplates the end of her life and worries about whether her children are happy.

Jamie begins casually sleeping with Sandy, a former coworker from Atom. One morning, he receives several calls from Lee but is preoccupied with the presence of Sandy. When he calls Lee back, she tells him that Joan has died.

Nelson meets with Lee and Jamie to provide information about Joan’s death. He explains that Joan seemingly went for a hike in High Rock Park but appears to have lost consciousness while walking. Because it was a remote area, no one found her for several hours. Nelson is mostly retired from his legal practice but continues to work with a few clients, including Joan. Afterward, Lee and Jamie drive together to Joan’s townhouse. They note the surprising coincidence that Joan died on the same hiking path she had often complained about. They begin sorting through Joan’s possessions.

Eventually, Nelson calls and tells them that police have released the possessions Joan had with her when her body was found. An empty pill container was found inside her backpack; they are the pills prescribed to Bill when he was planning to end his life. Jamie struggles with anger as he contemplates his mother purposefully taking an overdose to avoid further decline and a lingering death.

The narrative flashes back to the period when Joan was preparing for her death. Joan was determined to die while she still had agency to control her own fate and contemplated different options. She considered jumping from the cliffs at High Rock but eventually decided the pills would be easiest and most reliable. Joan swallowed the pills while sitting peacefully in the sun. In her final moments, she reflected on a story that Dustin (one of the hosts at the café) told her about the Norse god Baldr.

As Joan doesn’t leave any explicit wishes about her funeral, the family gathers at Lotus Garden (the restaurant where she once worked) after the service. Misty doesn’t attend the church service but comes to the restaurant and tells Lee about her affection and respect for Joan. Ellison drives Jamie to the restaurant but is hurt when Jamie makes a comment that Ellison finds insensitive. He explains to Jamie that many of the café employees had deep relationships with Joan and consider her to be family. Jamie apologizes and acknowledges the deep friendship between himself and Ellison. Jamie thinks back to a memory of how, as a child, he and Lee had questioned Joan about what would happen if they died. Joan had expressed that she would be overwhelmed by grief.

Lee has a business trip scheduled shortly after Joan’s death and decides to go anyway. Jamie drives her to the airport. Aboard the plane, Lee receives texts from Marc; they have recently begun seeing one another again although she feels ambivalent about the relationship. As the plane takes off, Lee contemplates the unknown nature of the future and her love for Joan.