Cherry recalls baking a disastrous pineapple upside-down cake for Jack's twentieth birthday, which further cemented Mrs. Murphy's low opinion of her. Jack's birthday required him to register for national service under Australia's conscription system, where a televised "birthday ballot" determined who would serve. Cherry, Jack, and his parents watched the ballot together. When the second-to-last number drawn was 101, Mrs. Murphy expressed relief, confident 102 wouldn't follow. Cherry corrected her, explaining the gambler's fallacy—that each draw carried the same probability regardless of prior results. The next marble drawn was 102, Jack's number. Mrs. Murphy burst into tears and blamed Cherry for bringing bad luck.

Cherry reflects on her family's differing views on the Vietnam War: her grandmother dismissed it as America's problem, Auntie Pat protested conscription, and her mother initially supported the war but reversed her stance the moment Jack was selected for overseas service. Jack, pragmatic and uncomplaining, accepted his duty and looked forward to traveling abroad for the first time. He planned to return, marry Cherry, and have four children. Cherry's mother never offered to do a reading for Jack before he left.

At the train station, as Cherry said goodbye, a clear, definitive voice in her head told her she would never see Jack again. She chose to ignore it. Instead, she went home and wrote Jack a love letter about a high school geometry lesson in which her teacher, Miss Crane, demonstrated how a zero-dimensional point doesn't exist, but connecting points creates a line—something from nothing. Cherry told Jack that being with him made her feel close to understanding something profound, and that she had been a nonexistent point floating in space until she met him.

Cherry admits with self-deprecating humor that the letter was embarrassingly poetic, but it didn't matter: she doesn't believe Jack ever read or received it. Jack had been in Vietnam only twenty days when he and two other conscripts were wounded by an enemy mine. Jack died in a field hospital the next morning; the other two recovered. Cherry reflects that Jack was born a minute before midnight—had he been born sixty seconds later, his different birthdate would have meant a different ballot number, and he would have lived to become her husband and the father of her children.

A decade later, Cherry encountered Mrs. Murphy on the street in Hornsby. Mrs. Murphy, looking old and drawn, made eye contact but then turned away sharply, crossing the street to avoid Cherry. Cherry's mother, meanwhile, never stopped admiring the floating shelves Jack had built—geometrically perfect and beautifully crafted, a lasting remnant of his life.