"I may not have killed her, but I was too soft to do what might have saved her."

"You mean torture her, just as Timothy has tortured Everly. That's not a method. It's pure madness."

"She's alive," he concluded.

"Yeah, and out of all the medical milestones she has passed the one thing that sticks out most in her mind is the doctor who let her sleep with oven-mitts on her hands. The one who played pretend, and showed her kindness, because she felt like she mattered to no one." I pushed my mug away. "It's such bullshit, Pop. What's the point of getting to live if you don't get a say in how it goes. How it begins is how it goes . . . have you forgotten that?"

"I could never forget," he said quietly.

I sighed in exhaustion. "You have to stop torturing yourself. One thing I know for damn sure is mom would have never wanted you to be miserable."

"I'm not miserable," he argued. "I'm just missing a really big piece of myself."

I tried to joke. "Yeah well if you don't snap out of it Marta's gonna divorce you, take all your money and head for the hills."

"She'd never leave," he said seriously. "It's why I married her. She just wanted children. I'm merely an afterthought. It's a perfect match."

He picked up his mug, finished off the tea, and then slid my coffee back in front of me. I added another spoonful of sugar from the bowl in the middle of the counter, and he didn't say anything.

"So . . . what was this dream all about?" I asked.

"I told you-Everly."

"But what was she doing?"

"She's with a little boy," he replied. "He looked like you but with blonde hair. She used to be the same age as him in my other dreams, but tonight she looked like she did on the Fourth of July. He called her Mom."

"Exactly how loose with the Goose were you getting before bed?"

He smirked. "Clearly not enough."

It was quiet as I finished my coffee. My father made me toast and scrambled eggs. For the briefest moment, it was as if normalcy lived in our home again.

"Pop," I called around a bite of toast. "If you could treat Everly today, what would you do?"

"She's grown. It's all different. And I'm a bit out of practice."

"You think I should just let it go . . . right?"

"I think it's not up to you anymore. Timothy cancelled the differential, so really there's nothing left to do. Be glad that he did, it wasn't fair to give her case to students. None of you would have passed."

"She's the girl who can't feel pain. I would have passed."

He stared narrow-eyed at me. "And stealing your father's old case file regarding CIPA isn't an honest way to pass."

"Everly told me," I said. "She asked me to do something for her, and she'd help me pass the differential. We had a deal."

"Agreeing to that deal is as dumb as stealing case files, Callum."

I laughed. "You don't even know the details."

"Oh I can imagine. As a child that little girl was too smart for her own good." He stared at me. "I watched you with her on the Fourth. You didn't have a single drink but you were the drunkest person in attendance. That's a dangerous thing when mixed with Everly Anne Brighton's gift of persuasion."

"It's not like that between us," I lied.

"It should be." My father waited for me to look at him. "If you're plotting something to help Everly, then it should be because you care for her."

"I do care for her, that's not what I meant. But, what if caring for her leads to my destruction?"

He rested his chin on the butt of his hand. "Trust me on one thing-your heart plus a woman will always lead to some kind of destruction."

"Ironic you should say that. Part of the deal involves giving Everly's heart away to someone else."

He perked up. "What do you mean?"

"She wants me to vet her case before a judge so she can donate her organs to a boy who needs a heart."