Chap­ter X begins on May 15, 2014, in the heart of New York City, where Addie, feel­ing a deep sense of long­ing, decides to bring an ancient tab­by cat home from the book­store where Hen­ry works. This seem­ing­ly small act, bring­ing the cat named Book into Hen­ry’s nar­row Brook­lyn apart­ment, marks a sub­tle yet pro­found step toward deep­en­ing the con­nec­tion between Addie and Hen­ry. By adopt­ing the cat, Addie hopes to fill the empti­ness she often feels and per­haps even to bring a moment of com­fort and joy into Hen­ry’s life. Book, though ini­tial­ly unfa­mil­iar with his new sur­round­ings, quick­ly adapts to the apart­ment, sug­gest­ing that despite all the changes that have shaped both their lives, there remains the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing a sense of belong­ing and com­fort, how­ev­er fleet­ing.

A ten­der moment unfolds as Addie and Hen­ry bond on the couch, shar­ing a qui­et, peace­ful con­nec­tion with each oth­er. But their peace­ful moment is soon inter­rupt­ed by Henry’s attempts to cap­ture the essence of their time togeth­er with a Polaroid cam­era. How­ev­er, each time he tries to take a pho­to, some­thing strange occurs—Addie’s image either fails to appear, is dis­tort­ed, or is obscured, as though the cam­era can­not tru­ly cap­ture her pres­ence. Hen­ry, bewil­dered and frus­trat­ed, con­tin­ues to try to take the per­fect pic­ture, repeat­ed­ly con­fronting the unex­plain­able phe­nom­e­non of not being able to pho­to­graph her prop­er­ly. This adds an air of mys­tery and ten­sion to their rela­tion­ship, high­light­ing a deep­er truth that Addie, despite her con­nec­tion to the world around her, remains elu­sive, even to those clos­est to her.

Despite the grow­ing frus­tra­tion and the appar­ent futil­i­ty of Hen­ry’s efforts, Addie indulges his per­sis­tence, under­stand­ing that his desire to cap­ture her image stems from a long­ing to hold onto some­thing real, some­thing tan­gi­ble. These repeat­ed fail­ures, while frus­trat­ing, serve as a poignant reflec­tion on Addie’s existence—her super­nat­ur­al nature ren­ders her, in a sense, imper­ma­nent and ungras­pable. Each failed attempt high­lights the tran­sient nature of both her phys­i­cal pres­ence and the mem­o­ries she leaves behind. As the pho­tographs pile up, this sim­ple activ­i­ty trans­forms into a sym­bol of their con­nec­tion, demon­strat­ing that some things, like Addie’s exis­tence and their grow­ing bond, can­not be cap­tured by the eye or cam­era. Despite the grow­ing melan­choly that accom­pa­nies each fail­ure, the shared expe­ri­ence brings them clos­er, reveal­ing the deep­er emo­tion­al con­nec­tion between them that exists beyond the lim­i­ta­tions of per­cep­tion and mem­o­ry.

The turn­ing point in this chap­ter comes when Hen­ry hands the cam­era to Addie, urg­ing her to try cap­tur­ing a moment her­self. This shift in per­spec­tive offers a pro­found real­iza­tion for Addie as she looks at the scat­tered Polaroid pho­tos at her feet, unable to cap­ture her­self in the way she wish­es, yet still capa­ble of mak­ing an impact. Through Hen­ry’s guid­ance, Addie takes a mean­ing­ful pho­to­graph, not of her­self, but of the scat­tered Polaroids, a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of her frag­ment­ed and elu­sive nature. This moment of clar­i­ty sig­ni­fies some­thing impor­tant: despite the impos­si­bil­i­ty of cap­tur­ing her in the tra­di­tion­al sense, Addie can still leave a mark, still mat­ter in the way she choos­es. This real­iza­tion marks a sig­nif­i­cant moment in her jour­ney, sug­gest­ing that her exis­tence, though intan­gi­ble in some ways, can still cre­ate mean­ing, even in fleet­ing moments.

The chap­ter del­i­cate­ly explores themes of vis­i­bil­i­ty, mem­o­ry, and the nature of exis­tence, offer­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of Addie and Henry’s com­plex rela­tion­ship. Their attempts to cap­ture a moment togeth­er reveal the lim­i­ta­tions of per­cep­tion and the sub­tle pow­er of con­nec­tions that go beyond what the eye can see or the cam­era can record. The inabil­i­ty to pho­to­graph Addie empha­sizes her exis­tence as some­thing that tran­scends the phys­i­cal, under­scor­ing her unique posi­tion in the world—a world where mem­o­ry is fleet­ing, but the bonds we cre­ate can last, even if only for a moment. This inti­mate moment between Addie and Hen­ry, as they try to cap­ture what can­not be seen, under­scores the notion that some con­nec­tions, the most mean­ing­ful ones, exist beyond the lim­its of time, space, and even mem­o­ry.