Harp Oletsky narrates the aftermath of the storm. Torrential rain—twenty-four inches in twenty-four hours—turned the Republican River into a destructive flood that swept across eastern Colorado and Nebraska, washing away bridges, roads, homes, livestock, and people. The protective bubble that had preserved Harp's farm and wheat during the drought has finally burst.

An hour before dawn, Harp climbs out of the root cellar to find his farmhouse destroyed and his wheat crop ripped from the ground. Rather than despair, he feels profound relief: he is freed from the curse of solitary good fortune and can rejoin the shared fate of his neighbors on the Plains. He reflects that the Vaults have stored not only horrors and sorrows but also happiness, forgotten dreams, and the kind hearts of childhood that can be recovered.

Listening to the meadowlarks and goldfinches singing among the ruins, Harp finds a revelation echoing the Book of Job: God's answer is already translated into living things, and the silence after the whirlwind is itself instruction in how to listen.

Harp later learns from Otto that the tornado skirted the root cellar where Dell, Antonina, Cleo (his niece), Harp, and Allfrey sheltered. Everyone survived, including the cat, who birthed seven kittens at 4:04 a.m. Allfrey laments missing the chance to photograph the tornado. Cleo wants to keep all the kittens, but Harp says the mother cat will decide—noting the scratches she left on the Sheriff's skin as evidence she has her own designs.