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shutting out the sight of the dollhouse, too. Then she stood at his side a moment. His cheeks sunken, his eyes like big dark pools in his gaunt face. With the shoosh of oxygen, his breathing seemed a bit easier after the exertion in the bathroom. He’d been so strong, such a force. When he spoke, his voice had been thunder. When he slammed a fist down on the table, the house shook. When he told you to do something, you did it, right that minute.
    He was a shrunken version of the man he’d once been. She wasn’t sure he even frightened her anymore.
    She was more frightened of how she’d feel when he was gone if she let her mother do this all alone. It was the guilt. She’d only avoided it this long by ignoring it. After he was gone, she’d never get rid of the guilt.
    There it was, staring her in the face. The old man was dying. She couldn’t ignore it, and she wasn’t such a bad person that she’d leave her mother to handle this by herself.
    For a long moment, she simply hung her head, and breathed in the stale scent of him. Then she went into the bathroom to clean up the mess her father had made.
     
     
    IT WAS BARELY TEN O’CLOCK, BUT SHE WAS EXHAUSTED. LYING IN her old bed in her old room with the rain pattering on the roof, Bree was slightly woozy from the wine she and her mother had drunk. After finally getting her father fed, into his pajamas, his pills taken, her mom using an old piece of Tupperware as a makeshift bedpan, and all the other tasks Bree had never known could be so hard, they were drained. He’d fought every step of the way. When Bree had tried to get him to take his pain pills, he’d groused and spat them out. When her mother tried to take off his pants, he’d called her a whore. The language had turned her cheeks crimson, but she just kept on doing things for him. Like she always had.
    Bree wondered how her mother could still sleep beside him, smelling his decay, hearing that throaty rattle.
    Well, tomorrow, she wouldn’t have to. The hospital bed would come first thing in the morning. Along with a portable potty. Jesus, the indignities.
    She wanted to go home to her own bed, her own house.
    In the darkness, her cell phone suddenly broke the quiet. She grabbed it, her pulse racing. Not that it would wake her parents since they were two doors down. But who the hell was calling her at ...
    Luke. God, it was Luke. He never called her. Yet he must have known how badly she needed him, so badly she could feel her heart pounding against the wall of her chest.
    “Hello?” She was sure her voice cracked.
    “Are you alone?”
    “Yes,” she murmured.
    “Touch yourself for me and pretend I’m there with you.”
    “I can’t. My parents are down the hall.”
    “Do what I say. Just don’t scream when you come.”
    “Luke.” What was she supposed to say? My father’s dying down the hall so I can’t play right now ? She didn’t want to talk about it. When she’d made the suggestion to him this morning—God, this morning, almost a lifetime ago—she hadn’t really thought of the enormity of it.
    “Do it. You need this, baby.” He rarely called her pet names, probably because she liked him to call her the bad names, but this one warmed her inside. “You’ve had a hard day, haven’t you.” His voice melted her.
    It wasn’t a question, and she made a guttural noise of despair he obviously heard.
    “Let me make you feel better,” he murmured.
    For a moment, he brought her close to tears. Sure it was kinky, but there was a sweetness to it, a caring in his voice. She so needed that soft, deep, gentle tone that soothed yet turned her liquid inside.
    “No one will hear,” he cajoled. She felt the rumble of his voice along her nerve endings.
    They’d had phone sex a few times when he was traveling. He’d email when he arrived at his hotel and tell her when to call. Usually late. She liked it deep in the night.
    She needed it now, even with her parents just down the hall and her father