In Brooklyn on March 13, 2015, Bea finishes reading Henry Strauss’s manuscript and angrily objects to the ending, insisting he cannot stop after Addie’s last kiss and implied bargain with Luc. Henry admits he does not know what happened to Addie; he has spent six months transcribing her notebooks, but anything beyond their final shared moment would be invention rather than her truth.

Henry privately wants to tell Bea the story is real and that Bea actually met Addie, but he keeps the truth to himself and lets Bea treat it as fiction. Bea praises the book as “really, really good,” and reminds Henry that her thesis idea about “the girl in those pieces”—the “ghost in the frame”—was Addie all along.

With the draft finished, Henry feels both relief and loss, and he realizes he is beginning to forget small, personal details about Addie’s face, voice, and presence—not because Addie’s curse has erased her for him, but because memory fades with time. He clings to the details anyway, reflecting that belief needs more than one person to keep it from drifting away.

Bea pushes Henry to accept what he has become: a writer who should sell the book. Henry decides to try, imagining the path ahead—an agent, an auction, and a single condition for the sale: only one name on the cover, and it will not be Henry’s. The thought of Addie’s name passing from reader to reader feels like a way to make her real.

Henry anticipates that the advance will clear his student loans and give him room to breathe, and for the first time the uncertainty of what comes next does not frighten him. He looks outward, wanting to travel, take photos, and gather stories, determined not to waste the brief, fast-moving life he has been given.