No one was judging her, she could feel that in the room. What she didn’t tell the company was the real reason Lew didn’t go: he’d had so much to drink that day, he couldn’t be roused when it was time to leave for the theatre. She shouldn’t have purchased a ticket for him in the first place. She shouldn’t have had expectations. She thought of the enormous cache of bottles in the basement and shuddered. Out of sight under the tarp, pushed into an enclosed corner that once was the coal bin of the original house. She had no idea how many boxes there were.

Addie was nodding her head, content with being present. Pretend you’re listening, she told herself. Listen or pretend to listen to anything that will take your mind off what Sybil has asked you to do.

THREE DAYS EARLIER, late Saturday afternoon, Sybil had reached out to Addie with a startling request. She told Addie she had asked her brother to bring her iPad to the hospital. After he’d gone, she ordered a variety of herbs and teas and powders that would help cure her cancer. These were to be delivered directly to her room on the palliative ward, and she was to pay cash. Sybil did not want her brother, her mother and especially her doctors and the nursing staff to know about the order. Her purse was on the lower shelf of the bedside table. As she was too weak to reach for it, she asked Addie to remove her wallet and go downstairs to the entrance to intercept the package. Delivery had been timed to take place during Addie’s shift.

Addie had no way of knowing who would be delivering, how large the package would be, whether the person—man or woman—would wear an identifying uniform. Sybil was adamant that Addie stay downstairs in the lobby until the package arrived. That way, no one would learn of her determination to treat herself with the new remedies.

“Don’t judge me,” she told Addie in her weakened—horribly weakened—voice. “Conventional treatment hasn’t worked, has it?”

Addie did not judge her friend’s behaviour, but she was overwhelmed with sympathy because she recognized this as the desperate measure it was. Reluctantly, she took Sybil’s wallet downstairs and stood in the lobby, watching every person who came through the front entrance. Every person who might have a package in hand.

After waiting a full hour, Addie returned empty-handed to Sybil’s room. There, on the bedside table, was a flat opened box, which had been delivered shortly after Addie went downstairs in the elevator. The delivery person must have been in an elevator on the way up while she was in a different elevator on the way down. Addie returned the wallet to Sybil’s purse—luckily, there were bills in a zipped fold of the purse, and Sybil had been able to pay for the remedies herself.

But Sybil was in a rage and blamed Addie. The staff had most certainly found out what was going on because the man who’d arrived with the package went directly to the nurses’ station to ask permission to access Sybil’s room. The staff did not confiscate the supplies, and why would they? Addie thought. The box probably contained completely harmless tea leaves or who knew what. Dozens of Cellophane packets of herbs and powders and leaves were tucked neatly inside the box, each one folded and stapled and labelled.