Immediately, Mina knew that Jacqueline had just realized her own mortality. Which, in a way, finally answered the question that she had posed to Doctor M on the evening she disappeared from Chicago:

Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occured to you that you don't go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one's memory. And yet, I can't remember it. It never occured to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squawling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, theres only one direction. And time is its only measure.

"When our time is limited," she said softly, "don't you think it wise not to squander it?"