Oh, this is beautiful, the ways she does and doesn't understand John and how much they love each other. How much she loves John's father, too, and understands and accepts his trouble with her coming death, born completely out of love and fear. How the tension between the boys was partly created by their father, but in a simple, well meaning, unintentional way.

This takes a family set up that could be cartoony and full of cheap drama, and without minimizing any of the honest hurt involved, makes it the kind of unintentional, unavoidable tragedy that comes about from mismatched personalities born into one family that happens every day.