Part 5 opens with a note from Elgin to Bee, who is now away at Choate. He sends her love from everyone at Galer Street School and reminds her that nothing that has happened is her fault. He says he remains in close contact with their credit card and cell phone companies but has had no word on Bernadette’s whereabouts. 

Soo-Lin faxes a letter to Audrey, who has left Seattle, announcing that she and Elgin are in love, that she has quit Microsoft, and that Elgin is buying a new house for them, a Craftsman home formerly occupied by Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, though he continues to live in a hotel. Audrey writes back from a motel in Utah, where Kyle, who has been diagnosed with ADHD and borderline personality disorder as well as a substance abuse problem, is enrolled in a wilderness rehab program. Audrey notes that she has begun to attend AA meetings for the parents of children with substance abuse problems. She says that she is “not the same woman who wrote that foolish Christmas poem” (237). 

The next communication from Soo-Lin is a frantic email written from an Internet café in Ushuaia, Argentina, on an aging computer that transposes the letters “p” and “b.