The chapter leaps forward in time to Jamie and Maya's wedding in Maya's family backyard. Rocky reflects that her mother has died, and reconsiders her aversion to euphemisms about death, finding 'transition' apt because her mother lingers in memories, photographs, and the air they breathe.

Rocky recounts hospice scenes: birds at the window, her father reading the paper, mending jeans, helping her mother use her phone with her own thumb, and laughing through incontinence and indignity. One night, with her father out making cinnamon toast, her mother told her she didn't need to draw so many conclusions—she could live with life's imperfections and still be happy. When Rocky said love would be the death of her, her mother gently corrected: death will be. Quoting Helen Keller, her mother said death was passing from one room to another, then asked Rocky to brush her hair. She died after Rocky left the room.

The family spread some of her ashes in Central Park among the daffodils. Willa marveled at nature producing such yellow from dirt and sunlight, suggesting it might be magic. Rocky tacked an Emily Dickinson stanza about pain and 'the letting go' above her desk, alongside a mysterious handwritten note reading 'How alive your heart to feel such sorrow!' The ghost babies visit only occasionally now and no longer cry.

They adopted a rescue kitten named Precious—an 'overlap cat' for when Chicken dies—and Chicken adores her, smothering her with affection. The chapter closes by flashing forward to Willa's upcoming wedding toast urging Jamie and Maya to share what matters and love massively. There is no baby. Rocky anticipates leaning into Nick, exchanging a smile with her father, missing her mother, tending wounds, and being as young and whole as they will ever be.