three pill bottles and divides the contents into the crystal bowls. One for him, one for her.
“What are we taking?”
“Just trust me.”
She thinks about stories she’s heard. Failed attempts. Ruined livers and kidneys. Brain damage.
“I want to know.”
“Don’t ruin it. Okay? I planned everything. One of these first.”
He hands her a small tablet, and she turns it over and over in her fingers, looking at the markings etched into it and wondering what they mean.
“So we don’t puke. Melt it under your tongue.”
They dissolve the pills together, and Allie takes another drink to wash the taste away.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” Ethan says. He picks up his dish of pills and dumps half of them into his mouth, washing them down with the whiskey.
Allie picks her pills up one at a time, filling her palm. Twelve oblong tablets. Ten small round ones. They feel cold and alien, an overwhelming amount, and it’s not even half of what’s in the dish. If she doesn’t consume them all, it won’t be enough. She’ll still be here, left behind, while Ethan is gone.
She glances behind her at the door. She could run out, only she’s wearing the nightgown and where would she go? There’s nothing out there for her.
“You can do it,” Ethan encourages, and she shoves the whole handful into her mouth. Her throat fights her, closing against the chalky ovals. She swallows whiskey, but that chokes her too, and she gags on the whole mess, eyes watering. By the time she fights off the spasm of nausea and manages to swallow, Ethan has emptied both his glass and his entire dish of pills.
He leans back in his chair, watching her. Already there is a distance in his eyes, his face. He’s moving away from her.
Allie still has half of her pills to go. Her stomach is churning. Her throat burns with whiskey and a bitter chemical aftertaste. She can’t do this.
Panic hits.
Ethan is going to die and leave her behind. She’s going to sit here and watch him stop breathing, stop being Ethan. She’ll be left in this wretched place alone, alive, have to call her father and ask him to come and get her.
This is not an option.
Maybe she can take the pills with water. Maybe she can swallow them one at a time. Maybe she can still . . .
I don’t want to die.
The thought begins as a slow vibration at her core. It spreads up through her spinal column and into her skull, down through the bones of her legs, into her arms, her hands.
I don’t want to die.
It resonates outward, through her muscles and into her skin, every delicate nerve, every blood vessel and capillary. Into the room, which is spinning now, gently.
Allie hears music. Not the cello this time but a song with words, her father singing to her as he tucks her into bed. She feels safe, drifting off to sleep, knowing he will be watching out for her.
She doesn’t understand the words, something French, but she knows they mean he loves her. All of the music he shared with her is still with her.
A realization comes to her, now, when it’s too late.
Her father does love her, always loved her. The hours spent listening to him practice, the times he put the bow in her hand and guided it to make music. The cello lessons he insisted on, even after he was gone, that was love. And the breakfasts she’s despised, the oatmeal, that also was love.
Ethan is slumped in his chair. His pupils are dilated, his lids half closed. He looks younger without the tension in his jaw, almost childlike, and Allie wants to stop him from dying, only the room keeps spinning and her limbs are swaddled in cotton.
“Almos’ forgot.” He fumbles with something in his pocket and brings out a phone. It’s an old phone, worn. The screen is cracked. This means something, but before she can grasp it, the strains of the Bach suite in G drift into the room. Not just any version, not Casals’s or Yo-Yo Ma’s, but the Braden Healey version.
At first she thinks it’s the music she’s been hearing in her head, and then she understands. She wants to tell Ethan no, but her lips won’t work and the word sticks in her throat.
“’Cause you loved the cello,” Ethan says. “Downloaded the album just for you.”
Loved. Past tense.
Only it isn’t past, not at all. Loves. She loves the cello. More than anything else in the world.