"I got tired of hearing how much I looked like my mother. I've never seen a single picture of her and it felt weird to look like someone I've never met, let alone seen."

"Your Pop doesn't have any pictures of your mom? He's never shown you? He's such an asshole, Topolina."

Everly fell quiet. I hated her quietness. Gently I pulled my arm from under her so I could find an album in my closet. She rolled to my chest as I sat on the bed. I flipped to the fourth page and showed her my favorite picture.

"That's from when she was doing "Anne Get Your Gun." It was the largest production she had ever been in."

Everly's eyes danced as she looked at the picture of Julep dressed on stage. The lights. The costumes.

Her finger scrolled along the pictures in the album. "Is that ..." She sat forward to examine a picture. "That's the cafe in Uptown."

"It used to be a little theater house-strictly small production. Mostly actors and actresses who couldn't get work," I laughed. "My mom used to make all these recipes she learned from my Nona and they loved her. My father used to beg her to just open a restaurant and quit acting-she'd make more money that way-but she just couldn't give up her dream, and he loved her enough to never make her. But then one day the city decided they wanted to demolish the theater house to build an apartment building. It crushed my mom, like her dreams were literally being turned to dust, so my dad pulled some strings with the mayor and he got to buy the theater house on one condition."

"Let me guess," Everly said, "The mayor loved your mom's cooking too?"

"Not exactly." I watched her for a moment, a bit unsure of how she'd react. "He wanted my dad to give his wife morphine."

"Morphine for what?"

"To end her suffering."

Everly's brows arched. "Andrew killed someone?"

"He let her die peacefully. She didn't want to be in agony any longer. It was a bit more controversial than it is now, so it was nearly impossible to find a doctor willing to it. In a way you could argue that my father was one of them."

"But you just said ..."

"He gave him the morphine and told him how to administer it into her I.V. but he didn't actually do it."

"Holy buckets."

I laughed a bit. "Yeah."

"How do you know all this?"

"Because my mom wanted to die the same way."

"Did he . . . ?"

I shook my head. "No, of course not. But she knew what he did-I heard them one night arguing in their bedroom-it was toward the end, when they stopped chemo because it was pointless. I think . . . I think that's why he's so angry with himself. He couldn't offer her peace because he was too afraid of her dying. To him she suffered because he wasn't brave enough. Or ruthless enough."

Her face soured. "Like my father."

I flipped to another page. "Sorry, I was trying to tell you a secret, not make you unhappy."

She scooted closer and put her head back on my chest. "What do you think he should've done? In both cases."

"I think everyone has a right to decide how they live and how they die."

"If I asked you to give me a lethal dose of morphine you'd do it?"

"If you were suffering," I admitted.

Everly turned her head to look at me. "Honestly?"

"It's not up to me how you die. And I'd rather let you go than keep you here in pain." I grimaced. "You know what I mean."

"My condition is limited to physical pain. I've never experienced that so I can't say if it compares to the pain felt emotionally, but I can tell you that my spirit is suffering something great, Callum Andrew."

"Are you asking me to kill you?"

"I'm asking you to make it stop."

My eyes closed. "I'm trying so hard, Everly Anne."