"... you and Ruth fly to Ithaca and buy a solar-powered geothermally-heated house on a ridge surrounded by over a hundred thirty acres of woods, not far outside Ithaca."
From Shibai’s last chapter:
“Your Ithaca property has trails all through the forest. Paul, who sold you the house, told you that when his daughter was a little girl, he laid out the trails so that no matter what turn she took, she always ended up back at the house. As long as she stayed on a trail — any trail — she would never get lost, no matter how far down the ridge or into the forest the trail looped."
"You and Ruth and the cats would go walking on the cleared trails and when you saw what looked like an overgrown trail heading off somewhere ... you returned and cut the brush with the machete you had in Nagovisi, now fifty-two years old, your name carved on the handle ... "
"‘Ōhi‘a, your beloved tortoiseshell cat, hunted in the wildflower beds and in the woods but, one day, was taken by a predator."
A walk with Pippin the cat.
Winter solstice sunrise
Walking the trails after nearly finishing the book.
"One morning when you were nearly finished with this book you put your phone in your pocket and went out to walk the trails."
"I’m walking and Pips is doing the thing cats always do. It might be good to write about that and liken having a cat along with you on a walk to this whole Jane thing. Namely Pips’ll disappear into the bushes, and then he comes rocketing up from behind and passes me, maybe stops for a second, but usually doesn’t. He goes rocketing ahead and disappears into the forest, until I’ve passed him again, classic cat stuff, but that would be perhaps a way to end it actually, saying here in Ithaca, in my woods and my wildflower beds and my interlocking trails, I go walking with my cat."
