I glance around my office while my heart tries to find its rhythm again. My gaze wanders over the framed photographs on the wall to my left. Most are family snaps spanning the years from 1960 through the last tumultuous months, which have been filled with work generated by Hurricane Katrina, whose fury reached Natchez two days after it slammed into the Gulf Coast. But centered among the photos of New Orleans refugees and downed trees is a more formal portrait, shot seven years ago by a Houston photographer: the last pristine photograph of my family before my own personal hurricane hit. In this photo I am thirty-eight years old; my wife, Sarah, is thirty-six and vitally, startlingly alive; seated between us is our daughter, Annie, four years old and smiling like a sprite sprung from the dewy grass. My eyes are drawn to Sarah today, for just before this photograph was taken, we’d learned that she had breast cancer, stage IV, already metastasized. Above her smiling lips I see the knowledge of mortality in her eyes, an awareness that only self-deception could suppress, and Sarah was never one for denial. My eyes, too, are freighted with the terrible knowledge that happiness, like life itself, is ineffably fragile. Only Annie’s eyes are clear in the picture, but soon even she would sense the soul-crushing weight pressing down on the adults around her.

This portrait always triggers a flood of memories, both good and bad, but what comes clearest today is the night of Sarah’s death—an experience I rarely revisit, and one I’ve never fully recounted to a living soul. In those final weeks I saw something unfamiliar enter my wife’s eyes—fear. But on the last night it left her, washed out by peace and acceptance. Only the next day did I understand why, and I’ve never asked my father to confirm my judgment. But now my mind superimposes Viola Turner’s beautiful young face upon that of my wife. Viola probably suffered as terribly as Sarah did as death approached (I watched a strong uncle die of lung cancer, and it left me forever shaken). But what I know in this moment is simple: whatever Viola Turner’s son believes my father might have done to his mother last night, he could be right. For where assisted suicide is concerned, one thing is certain:

Dad has done it before.

“MOM, IS DAD HOME?”

“No,” says Peggy Cage, her voice instantly taut with concern. “Is something the matter?”

Instinct says not to reveal too much to my mother. “No, I just wanted to ask him something.”

“Are you sure?” Definite stress in her voice. “You don’t sound like yourself, Penn.”

Trying to fool my mother is a challenge akin to flying a 747 beneath NORAD coastal radar. “There’s a lot going on in City Hall. Do you know where Dad is?”