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Rose’s hand hovered uncertainly in the air for a moment before she pulled it back to rest on her thigh.
    “Thanks,” Rose said. “I like it.”
    “How’s Mom doing?”
    “Fine. You know, as fine as you’d expect. She’s nearly finished with the chemo course. This is one of her off weeks—we’ll take her back next week for her next treatments. She’s tired, and she doesn’t eat much, but it’s not as bad as it could have been.” There was more she could have said—that our mother had been so exhausted after her first treatment that she had slept for nearly three days; that a little while later the chemotherapy had torn out her hair, and Rose had found her crying on the bathroom floor, nearly bald, clumps of wet hair wrapped around her limbs like seaweed; that even after the worst had passed, it seemed the fight would never end, but Bean would understand the way things were soon enough. “We’re making it through.”
    “Huh,” Bean said. She could have asked follow-up questions about our mother’s health, but she was more interested in the way Rose made it sound as if she were a vital part of the whole enterprise, when our parents had survived so long as a nation of two.
    Rose squared her shoulders slightly. “We’re okay here. You didn’t have to come home.”
    Bean sneered a little bit, reaching up and tucking her hair back into shape halfheartedly. “Yeah, I should have guessed you wouldn’t be glad to see me.”
    “That’s not it,” Rose said, and the defensiveness in her voice surprised her. “I was just thinking the other day that I wished we were all here.”
    “Well, now you’ve got your wish,” Bean said, spreading her hands out, palms up, in a what-more-do-you-want-from-me gesture. “Cordy’s not here, is she?”
    “No,” Rose said. “I’m not even sure where she is. Dad sent a letter to the last address Mom had in her book, but you know how Cordy is.”
    “Good. I can’t deal with her right now anyway.”
    “So how long are you staying?” Rose ventured delicately.
    Bean shrugged. “For a while. Dunno. I quit my job.”
    Well, that was news. Bean had worked in the human resources department—well, Bean was the human resources department of a tiny law office in Manhattan, though if you met her over drinks, she just would have told you she was in law, and let you assume the best. Or the worst. The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
    “Oh,” Rose said. “Why?”
    “Why does anyone quit a job? I didn’t want to work there anymore.” Bean pushed herself off the counter and strode over to the door. “I’m going upstairs to change. Where are Mom and Dad?”
    “Dad’s at school, and Mom went out somewhere. They’ll be back later.”
    “Great. Then I’m going to take a shower,” Bean said, and clopped off down the hall. The excitement over, Rose followed Bean up the bare wooden stairs and went back to her book. If we had been sisters of a different sort, Bean’s reticence might have been cause for curiosity. As it was, it was simply another secret we held from each other, one of a thousand we were sure we would never share.
    Our parents, more out of atrophy than intent, had not changed our bedrooms in any way since we had officially moved out. This often led to curious paths of discovery, as it preserved objects and memorabilia we did not want to have with us in our new lives, but were still valuable enough that we couldn’t bear to throw them away.
    Bean threw her bags on her bed—the heavy, tulle-crowned four-poster that she had swapped Cordy for years ago. Cordy now had the heavy, wrought-iron white bedstead Bean had deemed not sophisticated enough. To her, at fifteen, the heavy wood posts at the corners of this bed had seemed the height of elegance. Now it looked sad, the tulle grown dark with dust, the wood dull and unpolished, the bedspread faded where the sun had fallen, leaching out the color. She kicked off her shoes and walked over to the