“I put in two. I think they fell to the bottom,” I said.

“I used to eat them by the jar,” she told us. “Probably didn’t help things. Formaldehyde or whatever they say.”

She sniffed the contents of the glass, but didn’t touch her lips to the brim.

“How do I do this?”

“Just drink it when you’re ready,” Nathan said.

“That’s it?”

“Only if you want to,” I said.

“I signed the paper.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said, nearly pleading.

They both looked at me like I had broken our unspoken contract.

“That’s not the thing to say,” she said, eyes narrowing at me. I wasn’t allowing her to have the dignity of her own choice, and I was going to be in trouble for it. I felt embarrassed that I was thinking about myself instead of Daphne’s needs.

She shook her head, looked out the window at the orange orb sliding down behind a faraway hill, and said, “Thank you for being here. It’s something, isn’t it?”

I didn’t ask her any questions before she was gone. I didn’t even try.

Nathan called the friend Daphne had delegated to find her body, while I cleaned up the kitchen and washed Daphne’s glass. I walked into the bedroom and stared at her body one last time before I left. She just looked like she was sleeping, not like she was gone. I touched her face. I wanted to see her breathe, but she didn’t. I pulled the blanket up to her shoulders.

I turned off her oxygen machine, and her house was finally completely still and quiet.

In the car, I put the trash bag with any remnants of our visit in the trunk. I could see Daphne’s floral hand towel crammed at the bottom of my purse, far enough down to be hidden, and we set off. I got a text from Bobby saying he was going to sleep at his friend’s house. It was up to me, he wrote, to make a decision about our future. I caught Nathan reading the texts, but neither of us said anything.

I pulled onto a two-lane road and parked in front of the poppy fields. Nathan was on the phone with Bethanny, letting her know that things had gone as planned. I jumped out of the parked car to the sound of Nathan asking what I was doing and raced up the hill. In the last of the dusk light, the poppies had started to twist and close against the coming night cold. I stood there in shock and bent over to catch my breath as Nathan came up behind me.

“It doesn’t feel like it right now, but it’s going to be okay,” he said.

I turned around and—through tears—leaned in and kissed him. In the darkening poppy field, Nathan did not push me away.