I knew what she felt because I felt it myself. How quickly I’d accepted Rorie’s plea to treat Beau! She’d given me permission to do the thing I longed to do in the panic of that tumultuous moment: to try to save my baby boy. Beau, the living reminder of the husband I’d loved so much, a child who never gave me a moment’s trouble, the child Rorie had always accused me of favoring: in the end, I’d had to make a choice, and I’d chosen him. I administered the medicine to Beau, even though I believed it futile, even though Rorie had a better chance. Nothing I did from that moment on could ever allay my guilt. How could I have betrayed my daughter to try to save my son?

I should have refused her request. It made no sense medically; he was too far gone and she was potentially savable, and the instant the golden-hued liquid had glided its way up Beau’s IV and into his vein, I’d begun feeling the first icy shiver of regret, but of course by then it was too late. I’ve spent the last ten months in an agony of useless, stupid self-condemnation. Just as Rorie had.

But Rorie, despite the odds, had lived. Her recovery had been slow and marred by setbacks, including an inflammation of her blood vessels that ultimately left her with reduced kidney function. But you cannot tell, looking at her now, that once she’d spent so many weeks in the hospital.

I pull her a little bit away from me so she can see my face. “You do not ever need to apologize to me,” I say, the words coming out so low and stilted that Rorie stops crying and looks at me in confusion. “It’s me who needs your forgiveness.”

Yes, she asked me to do it. That’s no defense. I can almost feel the air around me quiver with the sickening, unbearable thud of rejection as she pulls away from me, but then, suddenly, she’s plastered to my chest, hugging me with such ferocity I can’t breathe. “Mommy,” she says. “You wanted us both to live.” She reaches up and touches my cheek tenderly, the way I’d stroke hers when she was tiny and couldn’t fall asleep. “You were never better to Beau than me. I know that. It just seemed like everyone loved Beau more because he’s more . . . lovable.”