“Me, too, actually.”
She looked up, knowing it changed nothing. Still, she wanted to hear someone else say that she’d had reason to hope. “Really?”
“Why else would I go to so much trouble?”
“Yeah, why did you help me?”
“Well, it’s not all for you,” he said. “I get the feeling that my brother’s holdin’ himself to some impossible standard. I’m trying to give him a chance, too.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, intuiting an echo of truth she couldn’t articulate.
“Ever since the hospital, seems like he’s been trying to be someone for us. He was always holding it together, even when we barely could.”
“That kind of breaks my heart,” she said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“You’re a really great brother, you know that?” she asked, briefly flinging her arms around his neck. “I guess this is goodbye for us, too. Take care of yourself, and Phoenix.”
He gave her a quick squeeze, and hopped onto his bike.
Caleb andOrchidleaving hollowed Phoenix’s insides. He looked down, numbly predicting he’d see a gaping cavity devoid of life-giving organs. After they’d left, Veronica claimed the empty spot on the sofa next to him and twined her arm with his. “I’ve missed you,” she said. “Everything okay?”
“Nothing time won’t fix,” he said, oddly heavy considering his innards had been suctioned out.
“Is it over that woman?”
“She’s not a bad person, Mom.”
“I was about to tell you the same thing. So how come she came to see you, then left with your brother?”
He sighed, exhaustion weighting every word. “She has a history that makes the two of us impossible, but I’m the only one honest enough to see it.”
“Caleb told me about it.”
He leaned back, closing his eyes. She pushed a lock of hair off his forehead.
“So, I have a story to tell you,” she said, her voice quiet and soothing. “Imagine, twin brothers, schoolboys in the same class, with the same teacher, with the same math test. One gets a 97 percent and petitions the teacher to allow a retake, convinced he can do better.” She paused. “The other gets a B- and gives up, since he hates school anyway.
“Which way is right?” she asked.
He recalled his and Caleb’s divergent paths. Had their differences in motivation been evident even in elementary school?
“Of course, both the perfectionist and the dropout are going to have issues,” he said, eyes still closed.
“Well said. So maybe it’s time you were okay with something less than 100 percent.”
He opened his eyes to stare at her.
“Or rather, maybe it’s time you believe someone else could be okay with less than perfection.”
He swallowed over the hard lump in his throat, blinking.
“She’s got standards,” he said. “I don’t know if B- is going to be enough for her.”
“I may be biased but I don’t see anything less than an A here.”
She sat up to look at him directly. “From the look on her face, I don’t think Orchid sees anything less than 100 percent.”
