Nora wakes in her bed at one minute past midnight, believing she is in her original life but improved because she had kept Voltaire indoors. She searches her flat, finds Voltaire under the bed, and realizes he is dead, which returns her instantly to the Midnight Library.

Confronting Mrs Elm, Nora learns she had asked for the life where she kept Voltaire inside, not a life where he survived. Mrs Elm explains that a survival life doesn’t exist because Voltaire had restrictive cardiomyopathy and was destined to die young. Nora’s assumption of a car accident is corrected, and Mrs Elm emphasizes that what changed was Nora herself—she wasn’t a bad owner and the cat likely knew his time had come.

At Mrs Elm’s urging, Nora checks The Book of Regrets and watches “I was bad at looking after Voltaire” fade. Mrs Elm sums it up as “Sometimes regrets are a load of bullshit” and adds, “the only way to learn is to live.” Nora resists choosing more lives, then grows bored and curious, learning that Mrs Elm cannot pick a guaranteed good life for her.

Discussing time differences and sleep, Nora decides to try the life where she went to Australia with Izzy. Worried about entering lives in which she had already died, she is reassured that the library offers only living possibilities; death is the opposite of possibility. She opens the conifer-green book and, as the words begin—mentioning a busier-than-normal swimming pool—Nora enters that life.