Watching Beatrice Collins finish her dinner, Adrian Wright bit into a pear and headed out to drive his cab. He worked extra hours as a taxi driver to earn more money for his wife, but coming home twice a day and earning less was also for his wife. For his two daughters, though, it was easy to feel like they were unnecessary. This sense of being superfluous couldn’t be explained to others—no one would understand—so they could only bear it and digest it themselves. The doctor said that for a vegetative patient to remain in this state at home for so many years was especially rare; in most cases, home care doesn’t last five years. But for her to wake up, it would take a miracle. Adrian Wright said, don’t we often see news about someone abroad in a vegetative state for ten or twenty years waking up? The doctor shrugged and said, yes, that’s a miracle. Adrian Wright laughed, saying, something that happens once in a hundred years is called a miracle; a vegetative patient waking up is possible.

Shirley Wright washed the pear and handed it to her younger sister, saying, “You eat it. I know Uncle Alan probably only gave us three pears.” Susan Wright shook her head. Shirley Wright then cut the pear in half and said, “Then let’s each have half.” Susan Wright still shook her head. Shirley Wright got annoyed and said, “If you won’t eat, I won’t eat either. Maybe we should just throw the pear away.” Susan Wright looked at her sister and started to laugh, saying, “Throwing it away would be unfair to Uncle Alan, so I’ll help you eat half.”

After finishing the pear, Susan Wright sat at the square table to study, her eyes fixed straight ahead. Shirley Wright picked up and put down her book several times before finally asking, “Are you still mad at me?”

“What?” Susan Wright said, “No.”

“About what happened when we were little.”

“No.” Susan Wright looked up and smiled at Shirley Wright.

Shirley Wright looked at her sister’s smile—it was pure and sweet. Everyone on the old street liked her, but she knew her sister’s thoughts weren’t so easily seen through. She kept her bitterness inside and wouldn’t talk about it. But who could she blame for this bitterness? Herself? Shirley Wright felt she hadn’t really done anything wrong, but she still felt a sense of responsibility toward her sister.

“That year, what happened that year. I always feel like we shouldn’t have done that.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Thank you for telling Dad. If you hadn’t told him, you’d be just like me—a partner in crime, an accomplice.”

“Of course I didn’t do anything wrong, but, little sister, please don’t resent me.”

“How could I resent you, sis? What are you talking about? Maybe back then, I did a little, but as I grew up, I realized how wrong I was. I should thank you, sis. How could I resent you?”

Hearing this, Shirley Wright felt a bit relieved and said, “There’s always a little bit, you can’t hide it from me. You need to move on, look forward. You’ve done so well these years, everyone can see it.”

“Sis.” Susan Wright suddenly interrupted her, saying, “Uncle Alan gave us a few pears. Do you think Dad doesn’t know?”

Shirley Wright was speechless.

“Alright, Uncle Alan gave me four pears. One for each of us, so I could be a good kid. Isn’t that nice, sis?”

“That means you ate one and a half.”

“That’s why you’re the best, sis.” Susan Wright smiled.

“We should be good sisters. Let’s pinky swear, okay?”

Shirley Wright put her hand on the table and hooked out her pinky. Suddenly, she was startled—when was the last time she’d made a pinky promise with her sister?

Susan Wright stared straight at her sister’s pinky.

Shirley Wright pulled her hand back as if bitten by a snake.

Susan Wright slowly withdrew her gaze and went back to studying.

I owe you. This thought flashed through Shirley Wright’s mind.

“Little sister, maybe I should have been with you back then.” Shirley Wright didn’t even know why she suddenly said this. “Back then, we didn’t understand. We thought if we pulled out the tube, Mom would die. Actually, if Dad hadn’t rushed back, nothing would have happened to Mom. Maybe I should have been with you. At first, we planned it together. Now, after all these years, it’s a bit unfair to you.”

Susan Wright looked up.

“Don’t think like that. Don’t say that.” She looked quietly at her sister, her eyes calm. “You did the right thing. Sis.”

“Yes, I did the right thing.” Shirley Wright reached out and patted her sister’s head. “Thank you.”

Susan Wright smiled at her.

How have you been lately? I have a feeling you’re someone I’m very close to. This closeness is different from classmates, different from Mom and Dad. Do you understand what I mean? Do you feel the same way?

The letter paper rested on the writing board, the board on the bedsheet, the light dim. Shirley Wright paused, biting her pen. She lay on her side facing the wall, the lamp’s shadow flickering on the wall. She turned her head and saw Susan Wright standing by their mother’s bed.

Her heart stirred. It wasn’t that she was worried—after all these years, her sister had long since realized the wrongness of the past and couldn’t possibly have those thoughts again. But what was this flutter in her heart? What happened back then left scars on Susan, but who knew that the mark in her own heart would also ache from time to time, never letting her rest.

That year, they were still too young. Too young to understand gratitude for their mother’s giving birth, only full of resentment, feeling that nothing compared to their classmates, nothing compared to the other kids on the old street, all because they had a mother who was bedridden, unable to speak or feel; too young to always fantasize that if their mother died, their father’s attention would return to the two sisters; too young to read a newspaper article taped to the wall about euthanasia for vegetative patients abroad and naively believe that if they pulled out their mother’s feeding tube, she would die. She and her sister agreed to pull out their mother’s tube—who brought it up first? It seemed like it was her sister, it seemed so. Then, she suddenly repented and called the Johnson & Johnson dispatcher, getting their father to come home.

Why did she call Dad? Why didn’t she stop her sister herself? Maybe she was afraid to face the pinky promise they’d made. A coward, an ostrich.

Shirley Wright thought of those old days, fragments of light flickering in her mind: she and her sister playing hopscotch, playing house, jumping rope. After that incident, it never happened again. Not even roughhousing. Her sister became extremely respectful toward her—so respectful it made her uneasy, made her heart cold.

Memories surged, hard to stop. When Shirley Wright came back to herself, their mother’s bedside was already empty. It was late. Her sister hadn’t come to bed, but seemed to have gone outside. She didn’t know what her sister was doing, nor did she care. She turned over, facing the wall, thinking about how to continue writing the letter.

It all happened so suddenly. She heard hurried footsteps and the door being slammed open at the same time. She didn’t even have time to turn over before everything went dark.

Adrian Wright stood at the bedside, blocking the light. He stared at his elder daughter, Shirley Wright’s back to him, swallowed up in his shadow. He reached out, grabbed his daughter’s shoulder, and forcefully turned her over. Shirley Wright looked at her father in terror, her face blank, her mouth working to chew, then swallow.

Adrian Wright slapped his daughter. “What are you doing? Spit it out!”

He watched his daughter swallow the letter, then slapped her again. Susan Wright had come in at some point, standing quietly to the side, watching her sister in tears.

“Sis, you have only one year until the college entrance exam. Dad always wanted you to get into a good university. Dating will distract you from your studies—it’s wrong. Please don’t be mad at me.”

Adrian Wright asked who the boy was, if he was a classmate, how long it had been, how far it had gone. Shirley Wright just cried, refusing to say a word. Susan Wright leaned in and said it was probably a boy from their class, they were always together after class and after school, she’d seen it several times. Adrian Wright slapped Shirley Wright a few more times and told her to get out and not come back in tonight.

After about half an hour, Susan Wright saw that her father’s anger had subsided a bit and tried to persuade him to let her sister back in.

“Sis has always been weak. It’s so cold, and she’s only wearing a thin shirt. If she gets sick, it’ll affect her studies. I think she knows she was wrong. Should we let her in?”

Adrian Wright said nothing, so Susan Wright went out and brought her sister back in.

Shirley Wright didn’t say a word. Adrian Wright sat by his wife’s bed, massaging her hands and legs, not glancing at his daughter. After a while, he turned off the light and went to bed.

Shirley Wright lay in bed, eyes open, her gaze seeming to pierce the darkness and the bed board, seeing her sister on the upper bunk.

Then she heard a soft voice drift down from above. “Sis, do the right thing. You taught me that.”

A nameless anger surged in Shirley Wright. She thought, why did you have to tell Dad directly? Why couldn’t you just warn me in private...

Suddenly, she cooled down.

What her sister did was exactly what she herself had done that summer.

She had no right to say anything.

Her sister was doing the right thing, but she felt even colder than when she’d been standing outside. Maybe she was going to get sick.

Susan Wright slowly closed her eyes. After saying that, she didn’t hear anything from below. Her sister couldn’t make a sound—Dad wasn’t snoring yet.

She, too, was thinking about that summer. She wondered, if, like Shirley Wright had said earlier, she hadn’t reported it, but had pulled out the tube together with her, what would have happened?