going on, too many decisions to make, too many doctors they had to see and call, or meet at the hospital. Her father went a lot too, and Zoe stayed with the neighbors when he had to be at meetings with the doctors, or went to visit Rose. Rose usually came home between rounds of chemotherapy, but she cried a lot, and slept most of the time. Zoe watched her slip away inch by inch. Their mother said Rose was going to get well, but their father didn’t make promises anymore. When Zoe asked him what was going to happen, he said he didn’t know. She could always tell from their eyes when bad things were happening, which was most of the time during the last year. Zoe was nine then, and Rose was six. She still looked like a little girl, but her eyes were very old. Sometimes when she was home, Zoe would sit next to her bed on the floor and hold her hand. She asked Zoe once if she thought the fairies would come down from Heaven to get her, as tears rolled down Zoe’s cheeks, and Zoe told her sternly she wasn’t going anywhere.
Zoe had heard her parents say that Rose had a rare form of particularly virulent leukemia. Other children had recovered from different kinds of the disease, but the one Rose had was harder to beat. The doctors tried everything. Zoe could no longer remember a time when her parents laughed at anything, smiled, or relaxed. They looked terrified all the time, and in the end, no matter how hard they tried, or how lovingly Beth nursed her, Rose slipped away in her sleep at the hospital one night. She had told their mother that Pinkie, the pink teddy bear she had slept with all her life, wanted to sleep with Zoe when she went to Heaven. When their mother handed it to Zoe the next morning, Zoe knew what had happened. She felt like someone had ripped her heart out of her chest. Rose would never come home again.
Zoe was ten when her sister died, and Rose was seven. She had fought the battle for four years, and the moment she died, their parents turned into people Zoe didn’t know. Her mother lost all hope and turned into a zombie. After the funeral, which was unbearable for all three of them, Beth no longer got out of bed. Brad wanted her to see a doctor but she wouldn’t. She said nothing would bring Rose back, so what did it matter now. He wandered around the house day and night like a ghost. Zoe tried to reach out to both of them, but nothing she said or did helped. There had been so many happy times in their lives before Rose died, and none that Zoe could remember after that. Their home became a ghost town, as Zoe lay in bed at night, clutching Pinkie to her chest, trying to picture Rose’s angelic face before she got sick. All she could remember now was how she’d looked without hair, ravaged by the disease. Old photographs of her no longer looked like the Rose she knew.
For the four years of Rose’s illness, their parents’ lives had focused entirely on her needs. Zoe’s had to take a backseat, and her father had promised again and again that one day their life would get back to normal, but that time had never come, even once Rose was gone. They were too stunned and broken to deal with Zoe after it happened. All they could think of was their own grief, which filled the house like a numbing gas and rendered them unable to relate to anyone else. They could barely function or speak, even to each other, and didn’t want to. Zoe was always just beyond their ability to focus on too. Brad tried a little harder to reach out to her, with no success. Beth just couldn’t. She had been a beacon of hope for all of them for four years, but her light had finally gone out when Rose’s did. Her emotional tanks were dry, for everyone, even herself. She had given all she had to give to her youngest daughter, and Zoe seemed to be beyond her horizon. Beth slept almost all the time. Brad saw to it that Zoe got to and from school, and then signed her up for a carpool. He ordered in meals at night, mostly fast