The morning after Carl's death at the bar mitzvah, the Fletchers wake to grief on what was supposed to be Phyllis's headstone unveiling and is now also Carl's funeral. Ruth, alone in her kitchen, is stunned when Arthur suddenly returns. He confesses he traveled to Paris, Israel, Greece, and India trying to extinguish his lifelong love for her, only to accept that he is stuck loving her. Ruth tells him Carl died yesterday, the factory is gone, and the family is destitute.

Arthur insists this is impossible. He reveals that Zelig, distrustful of banks after the Nazis, used early factory cash to buy diamonds in Antwerp—the true purpose of his supposed chemistry conventions. He buried them in Maxwell House cans beneath the greenhouse flowerpots, along with roughly $200,000 in Israel bonds Phyllis maintained. Arthur leads Ruth to the greenhouse and digs them up. Phyllis, knowing the tax cost of converting them, had left the cache as a failsafe against the family's self-destruction.

Riding to Carl's funeral with her children, Ruth grapples with her devil's bargain and the resentment that her children never suffered as she did. She tells Beamer, Nathan, and Jenny that Zelig did not simply outlive the boy whose identity he took to America—he killed him, stealing his formula, ticket, food, and water. Marjorie confirms Phyllis told her this but never told Carl. The children are horrified and uncomprehending.

That night, Ruth informs the children about the diamonds. She will sell half, keeping a quarter for herself and Marjorie and placing a quarter in irrevocable trusts controlled by Arthur; the other half will be distributed among her children, making them wealthier than ever. The narrator concludes bluntly: there is no reckoning, no growth, no resolution—their problems are simply solved with money, because that is how rich people are.