Alone in the Cornwall Inn penthouse, Phoebe tries to abandon the habits of caution that have governed her life. She pours wine, opens the drapes, and studies the ocean she has never seen before, thinking about the indignity of Matt asking for a divorce over Zoom from Mia’s home during the pandemic. Wanting one last luxurious experience before she dies, Phoebe calls for room service, but Pauline tells her that service is suspended because of Lila’s wedding reception. The refusal unsettles Phoebe because she had imagined a final meal as the last deliberate event of her life.

With nothing to do in the present, Phoebe thinks back to the previous day, her first day back on campus. In her makeshift office by the photocopier, student Adam mistakenly assumes Phoebe is his advisor and confides that he may drop out to make pants. During that awkward conversation, Matt and Mia walk in for coffee, and Phoebe is so shaken by seeing them together that she can barely function. She clings to Adam’s absurd problem because it is easier than acknowledging the collapse of her marriage in front of them.

Phoebe then goes to teach and fails to control a discussion of a John Donne poem, as her students turn the class into a chaotic argument about rape, religion, and whether the poem should even be taught. Already rattled, Phoebe returns to the office and finds Mia alone at the copier with a paper jam. What begins as a mundane exchange becomes the confrontation Phoebe has long imagined. Mia apologizes for hurting Phoebe but insists she is not sorry for loving Matt, and she bluntly tells Phoebe that Matt is no longer her husband and that the marriage was already over when the affair began. Phoebe is left feeling publicly diminished and emotionally flattened.

Unable to continue the day, Phoebe walks out of class, drives home, and calls her therapist for support. Instead of helping, he tells Phoebe he will no longer accept her insurance and that she must pay out of pocket if she wants to continue treatment. The call confirms for Phoebe that even trying to stay alive has become financially and emotionally unsustainable. When she returns her attention to the house, she cannot find Harry; rattling his painkillers brings no response, and she discovers him dead in the basement.

Harry’s death becomes the final blow. Too overwhelmed to bury him, Phoebe gets drunk at Joe’s, wakes the next morning with the conviction that her life is over, and cannot make herself return to teaching. Looking at Whitman’s lines about death and then at Harry’s painkillers, Phoebe reframes death as relief and release rather than catastrophe. With her marriage gone, her work unraveling, her therapy disrupted, and her cat dead, she books a room at the Cornwall Inn and sets in motion the suicide plan that has brought her to this chapter’s present moment.