Caitlin looks toward the ceiling and closes her eyes. Then she says, “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Do you want to know?”

Taking my hand, she squeezes softly. “Yes.”

“Sarah’s breast cancer was particularly aggressive. We were living in Houston then, so she got cutting-edge care, but it wasn’t enough. She had a lot of mets—that’s metastases. Her brain, her bones. Intractable pain. She fought hard, but in some ways that was as much a curse as a blessing. The harder she fought, the worse it got. Her parents had been living with us, but even that got too hard. Her father had to move to a hotel nearby. He couldn’t take the strain. At the end, the doctors couldn’t control the pain without knocking her out. Sarah wanted to be at home with Annie, and she wanted to be conscious.”

I pause for a moment, trying to come to grips with the memory. It’s one I don’t allow out of my subconscious very often.

“Was Tom treating her also?”

“Not up to that point. But when things reached that pass, Dad drove out from Natchez with a black bag. He talked to Sarah’s doctors, then got rid of the nurses we had working at the house. From that point on, he and Mom and Sarah’s mother took care of her. I don’t know how he did it, but Dad managed to give Sarah extended lucid periods without pain. She spent almost every minute of that time with Annie.”

“And you,” Caitlin says softly.

I nod, trying to finish the story without remembering too vividly, or even fully engaging with my thoughts. “That lasted about three days. Then one night, Dad came in and relieved me from my shift beside Sarah’s bed. I went out to the couch and fell asleep. He woke me about five hours later.”

“She was gone?”

I nod again. “He just squeezed my shoulder and said, ‘She was a trouper, son.’” My voice cracks, and I take a moment to regain my composure. “I can’t tell you what that means when Dad says that about somebody. He’s seen a lot of death.”

“Oh, Penn … I’m sorry it was so bad.”

“It’s over now. Long over.”

“Not really. It never will be, not completely. I’m just glad Annie wasn’t old enough to know how bad it really was.”

“Me, too. The treatments are a lot better now, just seven years later.”

“Are you positive Tom helped her at the end?”

I shrug. “He never said he did. But looking back … yeah, I’m sure.”

“Did her parents know?”

“Her mother did. But all she ever said was that Sarah was lucky to have Dad treating her at the end.”

“They were right.”

“I hope she still feels that way. Because a trial like this will drag a magnifying glass over Dad’s entire career.”