Soon after Chicken Little's death, Hannah catches her dress on fire while she is lighting a cooking fire in the yard. From her second-floor bedroom, Eva sees her daughter burning and flings herself out of the upper-story window, hoping to reach Hannah and smother the flames. Hannah dies on the way to the hospital. As Eva, severely hurt by her fall, recovers in the hospital, she remembers seeing Sula standing on the boardinghouse's porch, doing nothing except just watching her mother burn to death.
When Nel marries Jude Greene, Sula leaves the Bottom. Ten years later, she returns, quarrels with Eva, and places her in a nursing home. Shortly thereafter, Nel discovers Jude and Sula naked together and severs all ties with her childhood best friend; Jude leaves Nel and moves to Dayton, Ohio. Sula begins a relationship with a man named Ajax, but he ends the affair when Sula begins acting more like a wife than a lover.
A few years later, Sula is dying, and Nel briefly visits her. When Sula finally dies, she mystically remains conscious: She is outside of her body looking down at it. She realizes that death is painless, something she must tell Nel.
The novel now jumps twenty-five years forward, and Nel is visiting Eva in the nursing home. Eva's mind is disoriented, yet she accuses Nel of complicity with Sula in Chicken Little's death. Nel walks away from the nursing home filled with nostalgic heartache for her longtime friend, Sula, and terrible regret for the long, lost years of her own adulthood.
