In the present, Rowan walks Shearwater alone at night, retracing the route she once took with Dominic and Orly. The moonlit landscape looks transformed and threatening, but Rowan is determined to keep searching rather than wait passively. Because Dominic had promised not to come this way, Rowan believes this part of the island may hold an answer, and she resolves to search every inch of it.

As Rowan moves across the island, the narrative shifts to a memory of the aftermath of the fire that destroyed her home with Hank. Rowan and Hank sift methodically through the ruins while Hank grieves every damaged object he recognizes, from childhood trophies to ordinary personal items. Rowan, who has trained herself against sentimentality, ends up doing the practical work while Hank collapses under the emotional weight of the loss. In the middle of this devastation, Hank abruptly tells Rowan he will accept the job on Shearwater, explaining that he had only refused it before because he had hoped they would have children and needed to stay.

Hank then says Rowan is never going to give him those children, which makes the real fracture in their marriage unmistakable. Rowan leaves the ruined house and mourns not only the threat to her marriage but also the destroyed forest, the animals, and the life she had built there. Reflecting later, Rowan concludes that Hank had loved her partly as a vessel for the children he wanted, and that once she admitted she could not give him that future, he turned away from her body and from the marriage itself. They continued on in a suspended, half-alive relationship after Hank left for Shearwater, maintaining weekly calls and the possibility that Rowan might join him, but she never did.

Back in the present on the windswept hill, Rowan feels those broken years fall away as she focuses on what she has found. Remembering the simpler beginning of her love for Hank and how he once taught her about growth and entanglement, Rowan reaches a grim conclusion. She believes she has found Hank's grave.