- A year and a half passes by and Hope has just graduated from high school.
- G.T.'s leukemia strikes again mid-summer, and this time Hope has to face the fact that it's the end of the road for G.T.
- She, Addie, and Braverman take turns at G.T.'s bedside for a month, watching him decline slowly but surely.
- Hope usually left the room when she felt the tears coming, but one day G.T. told her that it was okay to cry in front of him.
- She reads G.T. the letter she had written to Gleason Beal after he fled with the money from the diner.
- G.T. puts a positive spin on the situation and tells Hope the upside of that disaster was that it brought her and Addie to him. He can't imagine life without them.
- Addie is with G.T. when he dies the next day. Hope says she could feel angels coming up the staircase to take G.T. to his final resting place.