Hazel emails Lidewij about the pages

After Augustus Waters's death, Hazel Grace Lancaster learns from Isaac that Augustus had been working on something for her—a sequel or a letter—in the weeks before he died. She searches his house but finds only a black Moleskine notebook with the first few pages torn out. The notebook itself is blank. She checks the Literal Heart of Jesus, the church basement where they met, but finds nothing. The missing pages seem lost forever.

The Search for the Pages

Hazel's friend Kaitlyn, during a phone call, suggests that the missing pages might have been mailed to someone else. The idea strikes Hazel: Augustus might have sent them to Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction, the book that brought Hazel and Augustus together. Hazel immediately emails Lidewij Vliegenthart, Van Houten's former assistant, who had helped arrange their trip to Amsterdam. In her email, Hazel writes that it is "very important" that someone reads the pages, whether they were written for her or not. Lidewij responds late that afternoon, expressing sadness at Augustus's death and promising to go to Van Houten's house first thing in the morning to find the letter. She adds that she is bringing her boyfriend in case they need to physically restrain Van Houten.

Lidewij's Mission

The next morning, Lidewij and her boyfriend Bas find Van Houten heavily intoxicated. While Bas distracts him, Lidewij searches through the garbage bag of fan mail Van Houten keeps in his living room, but then realizes that Augustus knew Van Houten's address. She finds the letter quickly in a pile of mail on the dining room table. Van Houten refuses to read it at first, but Lidewij tells him he owes it to his dead daughter to read a letter from a dead boy. He reads the entire thing and says, "Send it to the girl and tell her I have nothing to add." Lidewij attaches scans of the four pages to an email and sends them to Hazel, promising to mail the originals as well.

Augustus's Final Words

Hazel opens the attachments. The letter, written over many days in Augustus's messy, slanting handwriting, is addressed to Van Houten. Augustus admits he is a "shitty writer" but asks Van Houten to help write a eulogy for Hazel. He reflects on the human obsession with leaving a mark, calling it "a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants." But Hazel, he writes, is different: "She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth." He argues that the real heroes are not the people doing things but the people noticing things—like the doctor who noticed that cowpox prevented smallpox. He describes sneaking into the ICU to see Hazel while she was unconscious, holding her hand, and hoping she would die so she would never know he was dying too—but then wanting more time so they could fall in love. He ends with a declaration: "I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers." Hazel reads the final line and whispers to herself, "I do, Augustus. I do."