Clarke's father's illness gets worse and he is moved to a hospital full-time. Clarke leaves school to be with his family, and then to take care of his ailing grandmother and mother after his father passes away. He ends up taking a minimum wage job as a clerk to help support his family. He attempts to begin a relationship with Emily, but is rebuffed, and he tries to begin one with Amanda as well after she comes over to comfort him about his father's death. After spoiling his friendships with Emily, Amanda, and Erick, Clarke takes a turn for the worse, burning his paintings and throwing out his art supplies, resolving to "grow up" and abandon his creative pursuits.
His grandmother gets sicker as well, but she reveals that she'd sold some jewelry in anticipation of taking a vacation. Given the circumstances, she offers the money to Clarke to go somewhere for a little while and clear his head. Initially he refuses, but after the doctors assure him that she will be fine, and after Adrian offers to look after his family, Clarke decides to return to Spain and track down Salvadore Sáez.
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After a few days of bumming around Seville, Clarke discovers that Salvadore Sáez is the pseudonym of his friend Ángel María. In shock, he has a conversation with Ángel, who reveals that his father is dead as well. His father was a cruel man who beat him and his mother and drank away their savings before he was eventually kicked out. After he left, Ángel never saw him again, but he eventually discovered that his father had won a large sum of money in an American lottery and left it all to his ex-wife and son, before being murdered over a gambling debt.
Ángel hated his father for what he had done, but couldn't deny that the money he'd been left had helped his mother take care of herself, and allowed him to make his art for free. In that sense, he started to try and forgive his father and became concerned with redemption and healing, which is why he'd begun his paintings, as a way to express the conflicted emotions he felt over his father.
Clarke initially reacts indignantly, upset that the art that he'd taken so much from could be explained by something so simple as a strained family relationship. Ángel explains that it doesn't really matter what the art means to him, personally. What has made his work famous is the way other people respond to it, what meaning THEY take from his paintings. He claims that there is no great cosmic meaning of life, but that each person has to find their own path to a fulfilled, meaningful life, regardless of if it's "important" or not. Clarke leaves and reflects on Ángel's words, deciding to return home and reconcile with his friends. As his plane flies home, he sketches the first piece of art he's done in months on a sheet of notebook paper, and has a brief discussion with the woman next to him about it.