Cherry reflects on how people reacted when she told them she was an actuary. Some misheard it as "actor," others didn't know what an actuary was, and those who had some understanding would jokingly ask her to predict when they would die. Cherry reveals that she always privately answered that question in her head, performing a quick mental analysis based on available data—age, gender, weight, smoking status, lifestyle, and hobbies—to estimate a cause and age of death, purely for her own amusement.

Cherry asks whether her actions on the flight were a bizarre extension of that secret habit. She emphasizes that actuaries do not point at individuals and predict their deaths; rather, they make educated predictions about the probability that someone in a particular cohort will die before their next birthday. She speculates that her career focus on mortality forecasting by cause of death may have caused all that data to swirl chaotically in her mind during her mental health crisis.

Cherry methodically examines each prediction she made on the flight, searching for logical explanations. She wonders if Leo Vodnik's construction magazine triggered her "workplace accident" prediction, if Ethan Chang's arm cast led to "assault," if Kayla Halfpenny's clumsiness prompted "car accident," if the woman who reminded her of her friend Jill received "pancreatic cancer" for that association, and if the pregnant woman was assigned "breast cancer" randomly. She questions whether she temporarily believed she was her mother, Madame Mae, noting she kept repeating her mother's phrase "fate won't be fought" and suggests she became a strange alchemy of both herself and her mother—two women who specialized in predictions.

Cherry then considers deeper psychological triggers: the little boy who drowned at the blowhole when she was a child, whose brown eyes and dark hair may have connected to baby Timmy; the charming woman from her mother's readings who married excitedly but later died in a fire lit by her husband, possibly influencing her prediction for Eve; and the increasing suicide rate among young women, combined with Allegra's visible pain, possibly explaining the self-harm prediction.

Cherry concludes by answering the one question she can answer with certainty: she was indeed thinking of death as she boarded the plane, carrying her husband's ashes in her bag, mourning her two best friends, and thinking of everyone she had ever lost. She describes herself as "crazed with grief" and acknowledges she still sometimes is. She closes with a sincere apology, stating clearly that she is not a psychic but a bereaved retired actuary who suffered a mental health crisis on a flight.