Zoe and Rose Morgan were the perfect complement to each other as sisters. Zoe had straight, dark, shining hair. Rose had a halo of white-blond curls, which sat like a cap on her head. Zoe’s features were beautiful, though sharp and well defined for a child so young. Rose looked like a cherub, everything about her was round, including her small, smiling face. Zoe was long and angular, all legs and arms, like a young colt. There were no sharp edges to Rose. She was loving and soft. She had learned to blow kisses before she could say hello. Rose was an irresistible child. Zoe had always been shy, although having the irrepressible, fearless Rose as her little sister made Zoe bolder and stronger. Rose loved following her around. It annoyed Zoe at times, particularly if Rose ran off with one of Zoe’s toys, and Zoe gave her a sound scolding for it when she did. Zoe was three when Rose was born and had stared in wonderment at her in the bassinet. Rose had bonded with her immediately. Her face lit up whenever Zoe walked into the room.
Zoe was six when Rose was diagnosed with leukemia at three. Zoe didn’t know what it meant. Her mother had explained it to her, that it was a sickness Rose had in her blood. She would have “treatments,” and have to go to the hospital and stay there sometimes. She was going to have “chemotherapy.” When they were alone, Zoe had asked her mother if it would hurt, and she said it might, and it would make Rose sick for a little while, but in the end, it would make her well. She would be fine again. Zoe saw something in her mother’s eyes then that she had never seen there before: fear. She could see that both her parents were afraid. Her father said he was going to take care of her whenever Rose had to go to the hospital, so their mother could stay there with Rose. And when Rose got well again, everything would go back to normal. He promised her that it would, and she believed him. She could tell that he believed it too.
Three days later, Rose left for the hospital, with Beth, their mother. Zoe remembered that she had a little pink suitcase and took her favorite teddy bear, Pinkie, with her. She was gone for four weeks, and their mother stayed with her, and came home for an hour or two every few days, to get more clothes and give Zoe a hug. When Rose came home the white-blond curls were gone. Rose slept a lot, and she lay on the couch, but she wanted to play when Zoe came home from school. And Zoe was happy to have Rose and their mom home again.
Rose stayed at the hospital a lot in that first year, and she had something called a bone marrow transplant. Their mom gave her some of her bone marrow, and it helped. Rose got better after that, just like Brad, their father, had said. Her curls grew back, although they were a darker blond, and her eyebrows and eyelashes came back too. Zoe didn’t yell at her anymore when Rose took her toys. She was just happy Rose was home, and so were their mom and dad. Zoe was used to spending most of her time with her father by then. It wasn’t quite as good as being with her mom, who always had everything perfectly organized and in control, but he was almost as good at it as her mom was by the end of that first year. Zoe told him what he didn’t know, like how she liked her toast, and which cereal was Rose’s. He did the laundry, made the beds, picked her up at school, cooked the meals. He let Zoe help him make s’mores for dessert every night if she wanted them. He read her bedtime stories, and they always called Rose before Zoe went to sleep, if she was at the hospital that week. They had a party for just the four of them every time Rose came home. They made cupcakes for her, or baked a cake. They put candles on them, and Rose got to blow them out. It was like her birthday every other week.
Zoe knew she was lucky that her father could stay with her because he worked at home, and had a studio upstairs. He had been an