at her attempt at humor and instead quieted. “Cleo, impress Veronica tomorrow and I’m pretty sure you’ll be a lock as her pick. Which means you’ll be a lock for the nomination.”
Cleo let out an audible sigh. How could she say no to that?
Which was how she wound up saying yes to Dancing with the Stars: Washington, DC (Charity Version!).
Georgie waited until Cleo had cooled off from the phone call to bring it up. And that took some time, to be honest. Cleo looked in on Lucas, who had fallen asleep with his headphones and computer on—she checked, because she couldn’t help herself, to make sure it wasn’t porn, but it was actually The Simpsons, and she started crying again because it really did appear that he was not going to turn out to be a world-class asshole. This alone was a triumph of modern parenting. Then she laced up her sneakers and ran around the neighborhood for what felt like seven hours but turned out to be twenty minutes and two miles, and then, with a cramp in her side and her anxiety over public dancing only slightly in check, she slunk home.
Georgie had ladled up a bowl of soup and also made some chai tea (Cleo had no idea where she’d gotten chai tea).
“Sit,” she said and pointed toward the kitchen table, and because Cleo had not yet adjusted to having a big sister push her around and having the instinct to push back, she sat.
“Let me start by saying I like that you hung Mom’s painting in the hall. It makes me really happy to see it.”
“Me too,” Cleo said.
“Now, the other thing. Regrets?” Georgie asked, scooting out a chair and blowing on her own mug of tea. “You . . . you haven’t been doing that all these years? Dad’s thing?”
Cleo blinked quickly. Why was she always crying now?
“I mean, well, yeah. Of course I did, or . . . I am.”
“Cleo . . .” Georgie exhaled, and Cleo wondered if she was going to treat her as a patient or as a sister. “That was Dad’s way of keeping score or of micromanaging. He spent a lot of time worrying about mistakes he made or different paths he could have taken.”
“Well, I hope you’re not about to tell me that he made mistakes with Mom!” Cleo was indignant. So much of what she was learning about people in the past few weeks had upended her. She didn’t know if she could bear to unearth her parents’ secrets too.
“No, not with Mom.” Georgie’s hand found Cleo’s, and she squeezed. She started to speak, then stopped, then found the words. “But maybe with me—I mean, obviously things weren’t great with us, between them and me.” She paused, lost somewhere in a memory. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why—why I was so mad at them, and why we never really clicked, and why I let that affect our relationship—yours and mine.”
“Did you?” Cleo asked.
“Not really. It would be easier to point to something, you know? Something concrete to say, ‘I had a terrible childhood,’ but I didn’t. You know that I . . . we didn’t. I just was how I was, and they were how they were . . .” She drifted again. “I guess I had more time with them, so I was able to see them more fully formed, as adults. You never got that space between childhood and the growth that comes with recognizing that your parents aren’t perfect.”
“I never felt that they were perfect!” Cleo didn’t like being put on the defensive. She didn’t like, frankly, not being the one in the room with the most knowledge about any subject, any one thing, even if that thing were her parents, and her sister knew them for a decade longer than she did.
Georgie sighed and reached her right hand around to massage her left shoulder. “I wish you and I had been closer. It was hard, with the age gap and with me always rebelling and then them gone, and we didn’t have a house to come home to. And, look, you can catalog your regrets; you can do whatever you want. You’re an adult, and you have succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”
“Not beyond mine.” Maybe calling Georgie had been a mistake.
“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant you’re . . . a whirlwind, a shining star. The twins print up news stories about you; they revere what