The day after Carl's shiva ends, Ruth and Marjorie put the Middle Rock estate up for sale. It sells within a week to a Persian neurosurgeon. Because the factory is structurally unstable from Marjorie's fire, it can be razed quickly; Haulers's liability insurance covers the damage, a mall developer buys the lot at a premium, and the proceeds easily pay EPA fines and settle a neighbors' lawsuit—restoring the family's wealth without consequence.

Each Fletcher disperses into a softened, diminished future. Nathan and Alyssa move to Livingston, where Nathan builds a gated compound for her family and conservatively manages his money. Beamer reconciles with Noelle and invests in her wellness scam; his attempted feminist Santiago reboot fails. Marjorie joins a benign cult upstate and finally thrives. Ruth distributes Phyllis and Zelig's heirlooms, moves into the Brooklyn brownstone, and rediscovers her own taste with simple bamboo candlesticks.

The narrator surveys peripheral lives still grinding on—Max Besser's bitter unemployment, Charlie Messinger producing a kidnapping-themed show, Mickey Mayer plotting fraud in prison, Lewis Squib staging slip-and-fall scams, Beamer's dominatrix, and Amy Finkelstein's arthritic, unrealized cello dreams—contrasting their struggles with the Fletchers' frictionless rescue.

The narrator reflects on the "Long Island Compromise": wealth breeds veal-like helplessness, while poverty breeds drive haunted by fear, and neither path produces a whole person. The Fletchers, saved too easily, will likely never feel the dormant survival genes of their ancestors stir.

Jenny is the last to leave. She walks the empty estate, then has Brett Schloff drive her through Middle Rock—past landmarks of her childhood and the Tudor where Carl was kidnapped—where she cries briefly before leaving for Cincinnati and a future family. The next day, bulldozers level both Fletcher houses, the greenhouse, and the Impossible Lawn; a new family erects a Georgian compound with a reflecting pool and tiki cabana, erasing every trace. The Fletchers, fully assimilated and dispersed, vanish from Middle Rock entirely.