Chick tells about his earliest childhood memory, that of his mother lifting him up to drink from a water fountain. He is gradually returning to his body, in the field below the water tower, beginning to feel the extent of his injuries, and he feels his mother leaving him: “[...]the dark pulled away and there were stars. Thousands of them. She was laying me down in wet grass, returning my ruined soul to this world” (139). He asks her what the word that the Italian woman said meant, and she explains that it means “to forgive,” and that he should forgive himself. She tells him to live, and the stars he sees gradually become the bright lights of the police, who have found him after his suicide attempt.

The last chapter of the book is narrated by Chick directly to the still-unnamed narrator. Chick explains he doesn’t need anyone to believe his story, only to know that he himself believes it. He sees the vision he experienced as his mother’s “echo.” He explains how lucky he feels for having been able to enter treatment for alcoholism and for not killing anyone when he crashed into the truck on the highway, as well as for surviving the entire ordeal.