Talia woke from another intense dream about Noel, noting that in these dreams she never managed to kiss him before awakening. The dreams had become frequent and felt so real that they blurred the line between memory and imagination.

Two days earlier, Talia had believed she saw Noel in the visiting area with another inmate, a man whose resemblance matched even Noel's broken nose. She wrestled with the contradiction: Noel was supposed to be dead, and whether or not she killed him was debated, but his death itself had not been questioned.

Talia revisited the night of the explosion, recalling paramedics wheeling out a sheet-covered body from the burned house. She was not permitted to view the remains. Authorities told her Noel's identity was confirmed by DNA, but she realized she had never personally verified the body.

This led Talia to consider whether the DNA identification could have been wrong and whether someone else might have died in the fire. She acknowledged how unlikely that would be and that it would not explain Noel's disappearance without a trace.

After weighing these doubts, Talia returned to the most probable explanation: her grief and longing had made her misperceive a stranger as Noel. The chapter closed with her conceding that her intense yearning was likely distorting her perceptions.