Nice? What did I care about nice? He attacked my character and questioned my motives so I struck back. An eye for an eye.
“I know Jake’s approval means everything to you.”
My jaw constricted. “I don’t care what he thinks of me.”
“You do care. You’ve always cared.”
She knew me too well, and yet, really, not at all. Because if she did, she’d know why it was so important for me to best Jake. She’d understand that the only way for me to truly stand out in this family, to be worthy of their love and attention, was to achieve a status equal to or greater than my brother’s. But it wasn’t an attainable goal, not when my talent was forever being compared. Jake was the hurdle I’d never been able to clear. His bar was too high, and no matter how close I got to making it over the pole unscathed, I always came up short.
“He’s proud of you, Quinn. You should have seen him watching you perform. He was so impressed. Mentioned several times what a great singer you were. And that song—he went so far as to say he wished he’d written it. From Jake, that’s the highest praise.”
She’d always been quick to defend him. He was the golden boy, the tip of the deadly mountain I had to climb. He could say or do whatever he wanted, and the rest of the family was content to give him a free victim pass, no matter how poorly he acted. But not me. Never me.
“So why didn’t he tell me that himself instead of ripping into me for standing my ground?”
She paused, shaking her head. “Probably for the same reason you throw the kidnapping in his face every time the two of you have a disagreement. Look, I understand that you’re mad and that you’re lashing out any way you think will hurt him most, but blaming him for the kidnapping… Quinn, you just can’t. Maybe you don’t fully understand what he went through—what he had to endure. You were young, and I kept that information from you at the time, but you need to know that your brother suffered terribly. There was torture and abuse. I have the police report if you want…”
“I don’t want,” I clipped her off. “What would I want to see that for?”
“Because then you would understand why we don’t blame him for something he had no control over. Attack his behavior, Quinn. Attack his music. Attack anything else about him. But don’t attack him for being forced into a truck at gunpoint. Don’t attack him for being stabbed multiple times or nearly starving to death. Don’t attack him for surviving a hell none of us fully understand. Just don’t do it.”
Never had things been presented to me so plainly. Usually conversations centered around Jake’s kidnapping were done in hushed tones with carefully selected words. But this… Now I felt like shit for always tossing around the kidnapping like it was no big deal. And to me it really wasn’t. I didn’t know exactly what Jake had been through because I didn’t want to know. My whole life all I’d cared about was how his tragedy affected me. I blamed him… for his own kidnapping.
What the hell was wrong with me? I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. I had to be better than this. There had to be another way to be seen without weaponizing someone else’s suffering.
I stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“To apologize.”
“He went home.”
Of course he did. I wouldn’t want to stick around to be victim-blamed either. I sat back down. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes. It’s just… this family. The pressure. The expectations.”
“Nothing’s expected of you, Quinn.”
My head shot back up and I searched her eyes. “Why?”
She looked startled by my question. “What?”
“Why does no one expect anything from me?”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“But youdon’texpect me to succeed at the same level as Jake, do you?”
“I never said that. I think you have every bit the potential your brother has.”
“But?”
“But why compare yourself to him? Why not carve out your own space in this business and be happy with your own unique successes?”
Oh, if only it could be that easy!
I shrugged. “Wins aren’t wins unless they’re Jake-sized wins.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “That’s your measure of success?”
