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the dishwasher.
    “I’ve got to earn my keep somehow.”
    “You do that every day,” Sarah said sincerely. “Without your help, I don’t know how any of us could have gotten this far.”
    David gently rubbed her shoulder, wondering not how they’d gotten through this far but if it would ever end. She’d been through the mastectomy, and all the rest … but what happened next? He knew that when their mother had been diagnosed, things had gone downhill rapidly—she was dead within eighteen months—but that was then, and this was now. Surely the odds and the outcomes must have improved since then.
    Gary hauled out a box of Christmas tree lights and ornaments, and while David held the tree straight, he positioned it in the stand, screwing in the bolts from three sides. Emme was already trying to attach some ornaments, and her dad had to tell her to wait until the lights were on. Gary had the old-fashioned kind of lights that David liked, big thick bulbs that were green and blue and red and shaped like candle flames—none of those fancy little twinkling whitelights—and the two of them wrapped the strings around the tree, handing the cord back and forth. Once they were done, Gary said, “Go for it!” to Emme, and she started sticking the ornaments on as fast as her fingers could get the hooks around the boughs.
    Sarah, watching from the sofa, sipped a cup of herbal tea and offered the occasional instruction. “Spread them out, honey. You’ve got a whole tree to cover.”
    David and Gary took care of the upper limbs, and when David took a silver papier-mâché star out of the box, he stopped and showed it to Sarah. It was the star she had made in grade school and that they’d always put on the very top of the tree. It was a little bent now, and he straightened it gently before putting it in place.
    “I made that in Mrs. Burr’s class,” she said.
    “And I had her four years later, but what happened to my ornament?”
    “A mystery for the ages,” Sarah said. It was the same conversation they had every year, but it wouldn’t have been Christmas without it.
    Once the ornament supply was exhausted, and the tinsel flung, Gary said, “Are we ready?” and Emme raced around the room, turning off all the lights except those on the tree. The evergreen sparkled in the dark, its boughs giving off a rich, outdoorsy scent. David sat down next to his sister, took her hand, and intertwined their fingers.
    “You know how many years we’ve been recycling that star?” Sarah said.
    David did a quick calculation. “Twenty-four years.”
    “Next year we should celebrate its silver anniversary.”
    “Yes, we should,” David replied, eager to endorse any implicit hope for the future.
    “When do we put out the presents?” Emme asked eagerly.
    “That’s Santa’s job,” Gary said, and Emme made a face.
    “I like it better when Santa comes early,” she said, in such a way as to indicate that the Santa bit wasn’t working for her anymore.
    “They get so cynical, so fast,” Sarah said, with a rueful smile. “I believed in Santa until my senior prom.”
    “Remember the time you got up on Santa’s lap at Marshall Fields’ and wouldn’t get off?”
    Nodding, she said, “Remember Marshall Fields’, period?”
    They were both nostalgic about the pieces of Chicago history, such as its flagship department store, which had disappeared over the years. Fields had become Macy’s, and as far as David and his sister were concerned, the magic was gone.
    But the magic of a lighted Christmas tree, festooned with homemade ornaments and strings of tinsel, was as powerful as ever, and Gary flopped down in his armchair with a sigh. Even Emme lay down on the wall-to-wall carpeting, with her chin in her hands, gazing at the tree. Taking off the glasses she’d just started wearing that year, she said, “Oooh, this is even prettier. All the colors get kind of blurry. Try it, Uncle David!”
    He took off his wire rims, said,