I'm not crying, you are!
......
Argh! I'd totally forgotten about the wishing cup. But that ties everything together so well (modulo a few points that I think we'll see being cleared up over the next few chapters).
So Judith was reincarnated after a full life, into a normal (if somewhat dramatic) next life, and that was it - no novel, no transmigration, not even any "evil aunt" . . . She just happened to get caught up in Luca's regression, and in the process had the memories of her previous life dragged out and mixed in with the memories of her time around the loop that Luca created. Toss in her strange literary taste, and the result seems to have been that she assembled the whole conceptual framework of the novel and her transmigration as something like a way to make sense of the the situation.
But the portrait! That was so utterly heartbreaking, while at the same time so utterly beautiful . . . Judith had just lost everything, even hope, but in the end, the very last thing she had which could remind her that life didn't have to be utterly meaningless, she gave to the child she loved so that he could carry that reminder with him.
I've been impressed through the whole story how Judith could build such strong trusting relationships with people, even with people who were notionally enemy agents like Isabella. I think this is the perfect exemplar of why that's been possible - she's a smart, savvy, pragmatic and sensible woman, which definitely helps, but under all that she's just so deeply caring.
Dammit, I'm going to get sniffly every time I think about this . . .