The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

A low moan comes from her throat, and she thrashes weakly in the thousand-count bedsheets. Not even money will save us in the end. I bend down low, murmuring in her ear, “He’s not going anywhere, Mom. He loves you. He’s right here, and he loves you.”

Sometimes the truth isn’t going to help you. Only lies will do that.

Her brow smooths out, and her breathing becomes even again. She’s drifting off to sleep, but I keep running my hand over her hair. It feels light somehow, as if she’s made of air, as if she’ll blow away if I don’t hold her here.

I must fall asleep because at a sudden sound I wake up. For a second, with one foot still in dreams, the other in a bleak reality, I think it’s Christopher knocking on the door. Relief is cool and sweet through my body, a cube of ice at the base of my throat on a hot summer day. Then I realize it’s not Christopher. There’s no one at the door. It’s my mother coughing, groaning—a terrible rattling sound that makes my heart beat double time. “Mom?”

There’s no response, and I shake her, hard, too hard, need her to answer. “Mom! Wake up! I need you to wake up right now.” I’m crying because the terrible sound doesn’t stop, the rasping precursor to death. I knew this was coming. I should have been prepared for this, but I’m not. I’m not.

I’ll never be ready to lose her.

I stare blankly at the still form under the covers, the sound of her sawing breath like a blade against my heart. The realization comes to me slowly, that she won’t die this second. Or the next. The panic fades to a dull ache of grief. My hands are shaking as I find my cell phone in the mess of blankets, still warm from where I’d been sleeping, rumpled from where I’d startled awake.

The nurse is only downstairs, probably preparing a light lunch that my mother will never eat. In the same house, but I don’t think I could yell for her. I can barely speak into my phone when she answers. “I think it’s time.”

The ambulance arrives without its lights flashing. This isn’t an emergency. This has been painstakingly prepared. This is the Death Plan. The one I never could bear to read.

I guess I’ll find out what it says.

Freida was right about that—I couldn’t avoid it forever. She stands with me, holding my hand while the EMTs move my mother’s still-breathing body onto the stretcher and into the ambula

nce. I follow them down the stairs, a cold sweat breaking out over my skin.

Avery meets us at the hospital, which means Freida must have called her right after the ambulance. Part of the Death Plan, no doubt. The plan that’s supposed to make this easy. Or at least, not hard.

She grasps me in a hard hug that I barely feel. I’m going numb, the tips of my fingers already gone, a frost spreading from the outside in. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers, squeezing tighter. It would probably hurt, but I’m too far gone. “What can I do, sweetie? We’re here for you.”

That makes me look up, and I see that Gabriel is with her, looking stern and faintly sympathetic, a dark slash of suit against the sterile white hospital backdrop. He gives me a nod, which makes me want to punch him in the face. Does he know how much Avery worried while he was gone? He should just have a heart attack right now and spare her the agony of a slow death later.

I’m being totally irrational, and I break out into tears on the shoulder of my old friend. “I’m sorry,” I gasp, clinging to her. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t want Gabriel to have a heart attack.”

Gabriel coughs. “I appreciate that,” he says, his voice grave.

“Do you want to go sit down?” Avery asks. “Gabriel will make sure your mom has everything she needs. You should take a little break.”

I shake my head, eyes closed tight. “The hospital already has the Death Plan.”

Avery pulls back, her hazel eyes searching and sympathetic, not even a little bit jarred by the words Death Plan. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Wait. Have you read the Death Plan?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice overly reasonable. “I had a meeting with your mother.”

“Is there a section titled People To Console Harper?”

“No.” Her voice does a high-pitched thing at the end which means I hit close to the mark.

Footfalls approach from behind me, and I whirl around to face Sutton. He looks warm and empathetic, and I take a step back as he nears, bumping into Avery, afraid that he’ll melt the ice around me, and then what would happen? I would feel everything. All the pain. All the loss. Those blue eyes hold a wealth of understanding. “I can go if you want,” he says softly.

“No,” I say even though I don’t know what I want.

A good daughter would already know what’s on the Death Plan. I should have been the one to call the ambulance and gather everyone. A good daughter would have forgiven her mother for being terrible at love, even though I didn’t realize until this second how angry I was.

Why didn’t she make it work with my father? Why did she have to choose someone so rich and emotionally unavailable in the first place? Why couldn’t she ever settle down? Surely there was a man somewhere in the country who would have loved and cherished a beautiful woman, even if she would never be accepted by the rich society wives.

I had to experience love to understand the impossibility of it. I had to stumble so that I could forgive my mother for falling again and again. We don’t mean to; we don’t want to. The ground opens up underneath us, and there’s nowhere to go but down.

“Where is it?” I say, my voice shaky but sure.