The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet 2)

Sutton looks concerned. “Where’s what?”

“The Death Plan. I need to see the Death Plan. I should have read it when she first asked me to, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I read it now.”

A notch forms between Avery’s eyebrows. “You don’t need to worry about that,” she says in what I assume is a soothing tone. “Freida and the hospital have everything taken care of.”

“I still need to see it.”

There is a grace in accepting defeat that I haven’t acquired. I only know how to fight, how to protest, how to stage an event so big that an entire city bands together to save a library.

Right now I’m surrounded by the things my mother dislikes the most—the smell of antiseptic and doctors. Because she learned how to accept death with grace.

A piece of paper appears in front of me, a little crinkled from its journey, darkened spots appearing where my tears mar the ink. I struggle to hold it steady enough to read.

Now I understand how much bravery it took for her to write down what she wanted to feel, to hear, to see. Now I understand what it means to surrender—not weakness but strength.

I swallow hard, turning away from Avery and Gabriel.

Turning away from Sutton.

“Thank you for coming,” I tell them because I feel an immense gratitude. And the incredible certainty that I’m going to be alone. “According to this we’ll be here for some time… waiting. You don’t have to wait here. I’m sure she didn’t want that.”

Which isn’t exactly what the Death Plan says.

“Harper.” Avery whispers my name, her voice pained.

She already knows what’s on the paper. My mother made sure that I wouldn’t be alone for this. She knows I love Avery like a sister. And she knows I have feelings for Sutton.

“I’m not leaving you here,” Sutton says because he doesn’t know.

My throat aches. “Most of her organs are torn up by the cancer. But her eyes are fine. She’s donating her corneas to someone who needs them.”

“It’s a good thing,” Avery says, but she doesn’t sound sure.

“It means she has to die in the hospital, because they have to remove them right away. So we have to stay here until it happens. It could take hours. Days. Weeks.”

“Jesus, Harper.” Sutton sounds angry, which strikes me as odd. Nothing much makes him angry, except maybe loving Christopher. “She’s going to make you watch her die?”

That makes me turn to look at him, a sad smile turning my lips. “What do you think I’ve been doing? It started before I even came to Tanglewood, before I even saw the library—the cancer that would kill her. There was only one way for this to end.”

The Death Plan requests the presence of Avery, of course.

And my friend Bea, who won’t come because she can’t.

It requests the presence of Sutton, who played gin over milk and cookies. These are all the people I love. And right there in black-and-white—Christopher Bardot, the man my father used to hurt her. Only now, as I stand in the overbright hospital hallway, do I fully realize what it cost her. Only now do I realize what she spent.

My mother’s in that hospital bed. It’s my personal rock bottom. I’m lying at the bottom of a pond, looking up at my reflection. And there’s only one face I see.

One person I want by my side at the hardest moment of my life. He isn’t here.

The beep-beep-beep of the machines drills into my head. It sinks into my soul until all I hear is the sound of beeping when I remember doing yoga with my mom in the mornings before school. Beeping when we watched old movies together. Beeping when I called her from Daddy’s yacht and told her about Christopher for the first time. Don’t get too close, she told me then. It’s only temporary. I’m bloodshot by the time morning comes, splashing my face with water so I can see straight.

“Didn’t you get any sleep?” Avery asks, gently admonishing. Gabriel insisted she go home at midnight, and I supported that. There was no reason everyone should have insistent beeps playing on a loop in their overtired brains, even when they go to the bathroom where it’s quiet.

She bustles around with a calm I can only admire, setting down a fresh coffee in front of me. Picking up the ten thousand pieces of Styrofoam that I pulled apart from my last coffee.

She cared for her father when he was hurt.

“How did you do it?” I ask.