“No, I know, I’m not looking for reassurance,” Harper said. “I understand why you did what you did, and I don’t blame you. I just wish … I wish you didn’t have to go through all this, and I wish I knew how to help you.”

“You’re, like, two years older than me, and you’re my sister,” Gemma said. “You’re not supposed to have all the answers or be able to save me from anything.”

Harper pursed her lips and stared down at her bedspread without saying anything. Gemma hadn’t meant to make her sad, and now she almost wished she hadn’t told her anything. It felt good getting everything off her chest, and for the first time Gemma felt like she wasn’t completely alone in this. But she didn’t know if it was worth upsetting Harper like this.

“You remember when we were kids, after Mom had her accident?” Harper asked at length.

“Yeah, of course I do,” Gemma said.

“Mom was in a coma for, like, six months, and I was positive she was gonna die,” Harper said. “But you never gave up hope. Every day, we’d visit her, and you’d say, ‘Today will be the day she wakes up.’ And we’d get there, and she’d still be in a coma, and you’d just say, ‘Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow she’ll wake up.’”

“In the beginning, you and Dad tried to tell me that I was wrong,” Gemma said. “Dad would tell me, ‘The hospital will call if Mom wakes up, and they didn’t call. So she’s not awake today.’ And I would just insist that she would be.”

“Yeah, so eventually we just gave up and told you not to be upset if she wasn’t,” Harper said. “Not that you ever did get upset. I mean, sometimes you would, and you’d cry because you missed Mom. But you never threw a fit or anything. You just said, ‘Tomorrow.’”

“I guess I was a pretty optimistic kid.” Gemma smiled sadly at the memory of herself.

“You were,” Harper agreed. “But what you don’t know is that every day when we got to the hospital, even though I was certain Mom hadn’t woken up, a little part of me believed she had. Because you had so much conviction. I thought one day you’d have to be right.”

“And I was,” Gemma said with pride. “One day, Mom woke up. Not exactly the way I had imagined or hoped for, but she woke up.”

“But you knew everything would be okay,” Harper said, looking at Gemma with tears in her eyes. “And I didn’t.”

“It’s okay.” Gemma didn’t understand why Harper was so upset, so she slid closer to her. “Everything turned out the way it was supposed to.”