Life After Life Chapter 26 Summary

How It All Goes Down

The End of the Beginning

  • This go 'round, Hugh makes it back to Fox Corner in time for Ursula's birth.
  • Something else is different—he has Izzie in tow—and she gives birth, too, to a boy she names Roland.
  • Sylvie pretty much raises Roland, and he and Ursula grow up together; however, a few years later, Roland drowns in the ocean at the same beach Ursula drowned in back in Chapter 4.
  • Mr. Winton tries to save him, but isn't quick enough.
  • Izzie sticks around Fox Corner after everyone mourns Roland's death.
  • Later that summer, they take a walk to see the harvest, but Bridget forgets to bring their lunches, and they have to eat the pork pie intended for George.
  • George gives them two rabbits, but Sylvie refuses to take them.
  • This upsets Pamela so much, Sylvie promises her a kitten, which dies within a week. ("I am cursed," Pamela declared (26.59).)
  • To keep Bridget from going with Clarence to Armistice Day, Ursula lies to her, saying she saw him kissing Molly Lester by the sweet shop.
  • Ursula hides her Queen Solange doll (thereby avoiding following it out the window to her death), but while Maurice is stomping around the house, he steps on and kills Pamela's new kitten.
  • She tries to tear all his hair out.
  • Sylvie takes Ursula to see Dr. Kellet because she's having déjà vu all the time.
  • Ursula ends up bumping into Benjamin Cole on her sixteenth birthday and kissing him instead of Howie, making it the best sixteenth birthday yet.
  • Maurice later teaches Ursula to shoot, but makes everyone angry when he kills the fox on the property, too.
  • On the day Nancy Shawcross is killed, Ursula isn't able to stop it this time since she's too busy canoodling with Benjamin Cole in the bushes.
  • They feel guilty, and never see each other again.
  • In October, she has a bunch of terrible déjà vu episodes—seeing visions of Derek Oliphant and her abortion, for example—and passes out.
  • She's taken to a private clinic where Dr. Kellet takes care of her until Hugh comes to pick her up.
  • She still sees things, though, and ends up jumping out the attic window: "She opened her arms to the black bat and they flew to each other, embracing in the air like long-lost souls" (26.230).