- Taylor suspects that the school is burning down, but when they arrive on the scene, it turns out to be worse: Her House is on fire and the yard is full of scared girls.
- All of them are accounted for except two—Jessa and her friend Chloe.
- Taylor runs toward the House calling for the girls, but feels the Brigadier pull her back. Then she passes out.
- In her mind, Taylor is with the boy in the tree and they hear the sobbing of the creature at the end of the branch. She asks the boy where he comes from and the boy in the tree tells her that Taylor herself brought him weeks before.
- Taylor crawls through the branches until she finds the Hermit sitting there crying and repeatedly asking for forgiveness. And then Taylor realizes that it's not her he's saying it to—the boy tells Taylor to explain to the Hermit that there is nothing to forgive.
- They sit in the tree together and remember Tate, Narnie, and Jude, the Prayer Tree, and the tunnel they built.
- The boy—Webb—takes Taylor's hand and walks her to the end of the branch. She asks him if it was her he was coming for, but he shakes his head and throws her into the river.
- Taylor comes to and looks into the stunned faces of the Brigadier, Santangelo's dad, and Raffaela, who is holding her inhaler.
- When they tell her they haven't found Jessa and Chloe, Taylor tells them about the tunnel and how Jessa was always talking about how her father told her it was there.
- Jude says the story is true, and he should know since he helped dig the tunnel.
- The whole group goes into the other House the tunnel is connected to through a hole in the floor of a back room. It's decided that Jonah will go into the tunnel to look for the girls.
- When he goes in, Taylor tells Jude about her vision of Webb and the Hermit when she fainted. Mr. Palmer tells Taylor that she didn't faint.
- So… what? She was dead? Sure sounds that way. Remember, she's asthmatic, and being around a fire in the kind of stressed situation Taylor was in would be a lethal combination.
- Jonah returns, pulling Jessa behind him. Santangelo goes in after Chloe.
- Jessa is unconscious, so Taylor talks to her, telling her the story of the boy on the bike who rescued the kids on the Jellicoe Road from the accident. Gradually, Santangelo's dad and the ambulance driver at the scene take over the story, and Jude completes it.
- Santangelo emerges from the hole in the floor with Chloe and the two girls are taken to the hospital.
- In the waiting room, Taylor tells Jude that he's wrong about Hannah: She doesn't wish he were Tate, Webb, or Fitz—she's in love with him and if he asked her to marry him, she'd probably say yes.
- Jude tells her that Hannah is in the mountains outside Sydney with Tate, who wanted Hannah to help her die clean, like Mrs. Dubose. Dying clean, she believes, is the only thing she has to give her daughter.
- Then Hannah shows up. She and Taylor hug, and she tells Taylor that her mom is at the hospice and she can see her tomorrow.
- Taylor, however, disagrees. She thinks Webb would want Tate to be brought back to the house on the river to die. She also knows that Jude and Hannah, the people who taught her how to love, are going to be with her for the rest of their lives.