After her mother cuts her foot during the earlier driveway chaos, Emma cleans and bandages the wound and notices how unstable and exhausted her mother looks. Emma knows Neil has not been cheating, but her mother still reacts badly to any hint of abandonment, which bitterly reminds Emma of her own neglected childhood. When Neil returns, comforts Emma's mother, and seems to settle the situation, Emma leaves and finds that Maddy is waiting but Justin is gone.

In the following days, Emma feels emotionally reduced and keeps herself distant from Justin. The two continue only the minimal daily texts required by their curse-breaking plan, and Emma dreads their fourth and final date without fully understanding why. After Neil takes Emma's mother on a trip to Mexico and Maddy leaves to visit her parents, Emma is left alone at the island cottage. She plants the other landscaping but cannot bring herself to leave the rosebush there, because it feels too important and too vulnerable; Emma instinctively thinks of Justin's house as the place where things are loved and safe.

Emma also receives her DNA test results, which tell her basic ancestry but deepen her frustration that her mother has erased so much of her past. Emma briefly considers opening the settings to look for biological relatives, then decides she is too fragile to handle that possibility yet. Meanwhile, Sarah keeps sending messages and photos from Justin's house. When Emma sees Justin in the background of one picture, the sight physically hurts, and Emma realizes she misses not only Justin but also the comfort, routine, and belonging she felt with his siblings and their home.

After a long, rainy workday, Emma goes to bed exhausted and wakes in the middle of the night violently sick with vomiting and diarrhea. Alone in the cottage, Emma cannot keep down water, has almost no food or medicine, and quickly becomes weak and dehydrated. She calls in sick, tells Maddy she thinks she has norovirus, and replies to Justin only that she is not feeling well, refusing his call. Emma tries water, food, a shower, and sleep, but nothing helps, and a low-battery smoke alarm keeps chirping through her misery.

By the next day, Emma has a fever, can barely move, and becomes frightened by how sick she is. Being stranded on the island without an address makes her panic about how anyone could reach her, and her mother's voicemail reinforces her old fear that no one is coming. The illness and the smoke alarm trigger memories of childhood abandonment, and Emma begins to spiral into feverish, helpless thoughts. At last, when Justin calls again, Emma answers long enough to tell him that she is very sick, revealing how completely her isolation has broken through her usual instinct to endure everything alone.