The end of the story shows the father and his three children walking the lane back home as Nancy is left abandoned in her house, wailing. The twenty-four-year-old Quentin who is narrating seems, throughout the text, to have been avoiding facing how inadequate his family was at protecting Nancy. He even mentally tries to change the subject via the digression about Mr. Lovelady, for example. But now that the subject matter of her abandonment is at hand, he must face it.
The narrator chooses to include two significant details that powerfully illustrate the indifference his family showed Nancy. First, the nine-year-old Quentin at last speaks up to ask who will do his family's washing now that Nancy is gone. It seems that the adult is confessing here, acknowledging that this terrible fate befell Nancy and all he could think about was the laundry.
The other detail the narrator chooses to include is the final image: seven-year-old Caddy and five-year-old Jason arguing over whether Jason is scared or not:
"You're worse," Caddy said, "you are a tattletale. If something was to jump out, you'd be scairder than a n*****."
"I wouldn't," Jason said.
"You'd cry," Caddy said.
"Caddy," father said.
"I wouldn't!" Jason said.
"Scairy cat," Caddy said.
"Candace!" father said. (6.11-17)
The father is impotently yelling at Caddy (short for Candace) to stop teasing Jason. All these three can do, in the face of Nancy's plight, is to argue and impotently try to stop the arguing. Meanwhile, Nancy faces death.
One last note about the ending: the five year old sits on top his father's shoulders, as if he's the king of the world. He said, impudently, "I'm not a n*****" (6.10) and talks about how he didn't want to come in the first place. He's something of a five-year-old tyrant, and that he, on his father's shoulders, is "the tallest" (6.4) suggests that mean-spirited natures will reign, and black people such as Nancy will be left high and dry. Ugh.