She could see my look of concern and said, “We’re not going to the hospital. And I don’t want to cause a scene, so don’t you dare call an ambulance.”

“I won’t. She’s just bringing some ice.”

The bartender came back and I put the ice on Daphne’s ankle. Blue veins crisscrossed her wrinkled skin, and I noticed she had put on a pair of sparkly sandals for the occasion. Her pants looked pressed and new.

“These shoes were a bad idea,” she said. “I just wanted to look nice.”

She took the ice pack from me and held it on her ankle herself.

“Is she all right?” the bartender asked me.

“I’m right here and I’m fine.”

I looked up at the men staring at us and put up my hands.

“I can’t take her anywhere,” I said trying to break the tension, but nobody laughed. They stared at me and I stared at Daphne, who looked small and fragile. She looked up at me with confusion and I instantly understood that it was the wrong thing to say.

“I want to go home,” she said.

I helped her up and asked her to put her weight on me.

We drove home. Instead of talking, I worried I would have to tell Bethanny what I had done. I helped Daphne into the house, and she asked me to get her a Vicodin, her inhaler, and water. When I asked her if she needed help getting into bed, she waved me away. She wedged the ice next to her ankle and slid into bed with her makeup still on.

“I’m fine, Evelyn,” she said. “Go home to your life.”

16.

I called Daphne the next morning and asked her if she needed anything. She told me that she was fine and her ankle was only a little bit swollen now. She said she’d told her nurse that she had fallen in her house.

She kept our conversation short, and I assumed that she blamed me for what had happened. She told me she hated being pitied.

“No one wants to feel someone else’s regrets,” she said.

I couldn’t argue with this, so I didn’t.

She also said that what happened had only strengthened her resolve about what she was doing. She didn’t even sound angry about it, or resigned. She was just matter-of-fact.

She told me she would see me in a few days and hung up.

ON THE DAY I was supposed to meet Nathan to be with Daphne to help her die, I arrived at the Starbucks fifteen minutes early. I didn’t want to get all worked up when I saw Daphne, so I took a Xanax as soon as I got in the car.