She’d had a slow drive back to Wilna Creek because the temperature had dropped and there were patches of black ice on the road. Along the way, she momentarily considered how she might put her hands on extra morphine to help her friend die. Then she banished the thought.

In two days, Sybil had see-sawed from spending heaven knows how much money on a box filled with powders and leaves she hoped would keep her alive to begging for help to end her life. She had convinced herself that Addie would come up with a solution. Addie was supposed to be the problem-solver. Oh yes.

Oh no. She could not and would not end her friend’s life. A life that was going to end soon without intervention.

In the evening, when she had finally arrived home, she parked the car and made her way upstairs and collapsed in her chair and put her feet up. She had no appetite. She skipped dinner. Her muscles ached, her limbs ached, her eyes were so heavy her vision had blurred. Caregiving was relentless. Over the past weeks and months, she had tried to be positive, tried to support Sybil, tried to keep up the spirits of Sybil’s family. But her own spirits were down. The support part, the raw fact of being on call, of giving and giving, was more exhausting than any of the physical care, or driving back and forth between cities. The only outside activity she kept up now was getting herself to the Tuesday evenings at Cassie’s to meet with the company—her new friends. She would not give those up. Even so, a feeling of hopelessness prevailed. Hopelessness weighed so heavily, she sometimes felt she couldn’t rise from her bed in the morning.

She’d been in desperate need of music that evening and had lifted herself out of her chair long enough to put on a CD of Chopin’s nocturnes. She dropped back down, sank into a soothing lull and allowed the amazingly delicate fingers of Fou Ts’ong to calm her for a full hour until she was finally able to go to her bedroom and sleep.

“. . . GUILT,” someone said now. Addie caught only the last word.

A cognitive emotion, said her reflexive self. Socially, culturally constructed.

She had no idea what they’d been talking about. The company was indulging her; she knew that. No one was asking her to pay attention. They all thought she was grieving the loss of Sybil. And she was, she was. It was just that Sybil was very much in the present, not in the past.

She saw a cup of tea in front of her on the table but had no recollection of it being placed there. Maybe she had dropped into sleep for a few moments. That was frightening. Not being aware of the last few moments—whole minutes? But here was Chiyo beside her, reassuringly ready for whatever might take place. Addie reached for the tea.

“Other emotions get mixed in. Maybe you feel obliged to do something you’re asked, and you go ahead and do it, but you’re seething with anger at the same time.” That was Chiyo.