In the library, Nora watches a memory of her teenage near-drowning fade: friends pull Joe from the river’s edge as a bystander calls for help. Mrs Elm reframes the event as Nora acting with hope and survival. The Midnight Library stabilizes, its books restored to the shelves and lights steady.

Nora unpacks her rivalry with Joe, admitting she chased approval and that her parents seemed to back his dreams. She recalls how Joe’s discarded piano became her instrument, which she learned to impress him as much as for love of music. Mrs Elm urges her to stop seeking permission and approval.

Nora then realizes each life she has tried mirrored someone else’s dream: Dan’s pub, Izzy’s Australia, her father’s swimming, a glaciology path influenced by Mrs Elm, and the band that had been Joe’s goal. Determined to cast a wider net, she accepts Mrs Elm’s advice to choose books from the top or bottom shelves—lives less tied to her obvious regrets. A Robert Frost poem and Nora’s memory of Aristotle help her reframe her situation as a gift of many alternatives.

They sit at a chessboard. Mrs Elm describes how choices multiply like chess variations, creating vast possibility and necessary chaos. They play; Nora wins and feels steadier, sensing that mastery is less important than moving forward.

Ready to act, Nora asks for a gentle life: the version where she chose the animal shelter over String Theory during school work experience. She requests to enter that life next.