So when I walked inside my house and saw my father awake, rummaging through the kitchen cabinets like a lunatic, I was not in the damn mood.

"Go to bed, Pop."

He turned as if he hadn't heard me enter. "I had a dream."

"Yeah, me too. Sadly it's only a shadow, now."

"Didn't we used to have tea in here somewhere?" He closed the cabinet and started poking through another, allowing shit to fall to the counter and make a huge mess.

"It's like six in the morning. I'm beyond tired. Go back to bed, Pop."

"I was already asleep," he said. He found the tea and got water boiling. "I told you I had a dream."

"Well I'm going to need more than Earl Grey if you'd like to tell me about this dream. I've been up since yesterday around this time."

"I gave you your savings account after you graduated high school. There's more than enough to live well. Drop out of Cornell and become a life guard or something."

He turned around and for the first time in a long while, I saw his eyes clearly. They were bright and true. His face was even clean shaven. My surprise must have shown, because he nervously looked away, and then began to clean up the mess he had made.

I took a seat at the kitchen island. "Why are you so against me becoming a doctor?"

He sat with me. "Because you're going to waste your life being miserable and exhausted doing miserable and exhausting things."

"When I was little it seemed to make you happy."

He stood to get his cup of tea and then started a pot of coffee for me. "It was strange," he said, back turned. "Because I've had this dream before but it was so much different." My father didn't speak again until the coffee was finished brewing. He handed me a cup and sat beside me. "She was only a child in my other dreams."

"Who?"

He looked at me as if I should have known. "Everly."

"So you do remember her."

"So you know I was once her doctor," he retorted.

"She told me," I nodded. "Yeah."

"What else did she tell you?" He asked.

I took a long sip of hot coffee before I told him, "You gave her oven-mitts to protect her hands. And that you were kind to her."

And for the first time in almost ten years I think my dad showed a sliver of true happiness. He tried to hide it inside of his tea cup, but I saw his smile before he sipped.

"So how is the differential going?" he asked.

"Canceled. I think the weekend in Montauk pissed off Timothy, and he's putting me through hell as payback. Not that I really blame him-she did burn the shit out of her hand on my watch."

"I wanted to say something," he said, "but I wasn't sure if that were fair to either of you. You looked . . . I watched you together . . . she has that way doesn't she?"

I already knew. "Way of what?"

He rested his chin against the butt of his hand. "Making you fall in love with her."

I looked to my cup. "If you loved her then why did you let Timothy take over her treatment?"

"It was too hard after . . ." He looked behind him to the cabinet where the bottles of clear, gold, and pain-free hid. His hands shook as he gulped more tea. "Everly was this bright little girl who needed to be wrapped in a bubble. I could do that. I wanted to do that. But Timothy thought my methods were too weak. He wanted to turn the intensity of her care up to a notch I was uncomfortable with. She needed to be protected, sure, but his way meant the cost of her emotional well-being. Her freedom. Her individuality. I tried to do what I could to curb Timothy's rules, but he was her father. And then, suddenly, I had my own home to concern myself with, so I did that instead, at the cost of Everly's well-being."

And that pissed me off.

"Don't use Noelle and I as an excuse for why you gave up on Everly."

He had fire too. "I didn't give up on her! I just couldn't find enough darkness inside of myself to do what was needed to save her. I had been down that road already and it proved true enough. Look at Everly-she was only supposed to have three years of life at best-and she's alive today because someone was hard-nosed enough to do what was needed to beat that expectancy by sixteen years!"

My whole body shook with anger. "You didn't kill my mother. That is not on your shoulders, and she would never blame you for what happened. She was at peace with dying. She held me in the attic and told me so one day."