I became my little sister’s parent before I was old enough to become an adult myself. I believed that keeping food on the table and a roof over our heads was enough. Then she spent every dollar of her lunch money buying a birthday cake for a lonely boy in the hospital. The next morning, a black balloon and a red box appeared in our yard, and everything I thought I understood about love changed.

The morning after my little sister used every coin she owned to buy a birthday cake for a boy staying in the hospital, I opened our front door and discovered our front lawn filled with balloons.

Dozens of them had been tied to bricks and placed throughout the damp grass.

Right in the middle stood one huge black balloon. Beneath it rested a red box.

Della, my little sister, clutched the back of my shirt. “Syd, who is that from?”

I couldn’t answer. My stomach had already sunk.

A note had been taped to the lid.

“You came to my window every day. Nobody else did. And nobody knew anything about me. Please open it.”

—

I had been raising Della alone since I was nineteen.

Eight years earlier, our parents disappeared during a hiking trip and never returned. One week I was arguing with Mom about staying out too late. The following week I was signing school paperwork for Della with trembling hands.

By the time Della turned eight, our life had settled into a routine. She had the bedroom. I slept on a foldout couch while working breakfast shifts at a diner and evening hours in a pharmacy stockroom.

Della never complained.

That frightened me more than if she had.

—

One Thursday night, I was folding laundry while she sat cross-legged on the floor, rattling an old mint tin full of coins.

“You’re eating lunch at school, right?” I asked.

Della froze.

“I’m eating parts of lunch, Syd.”

“Parts?”

“The free parts.”

I set down the shirt I was holding.

“Della.”

She sighed like an exhausted grandmother trapped inside an eight-year-old body.

“Nobody dies from skipping canned peaches.”

“Why are you saving lunch money, monkey?”

She hugged the tin tightly.

“I have a project. A hospital boy.”

The hospital was two blocks from her school. Della walked with the Keene children and Mrs. Keene, who crossed them safely at the intersection.

Even so, my chest tightened.

“What hospital boy?”

“The one in the third-floor window. He watches us walk by.”

“You talked to him?”

“No. At first, I just waved.”

“At first?”

“Today, he was outside,” she said. “In the garden. In a wheelchair with a green blanket. Nurse Gloria was with him, so Mrs. Keene said I could say hi.”

I finally breathed again.

“What did you say?”

“I asked if he was the window boy.”

“And?”

“He asked if I was the waving girl.”