Dad had given me drive, but he always assumed Mom had given me even a little charm, too. Maybe because I was female, or maybe because he thought each generation should improve upon the actions of the one before, I was meant to do the whole career-life balance better than he had. The day Dad turned fifty, he’d pulled me into his office and said, simply, “The people are as important as the science. Learn from my mistakes.” And then he’d straightened some papers on his desk and stared at his hands until I got bored enough to get up and go back into the lab.

Clearly, I hadn’t succeeded.

“I know I’m overbearing,” Jensen whispered.

“A bit,” I agreed.

“And I know I meddle.”

I gave him a knowing look, whispering, “You’re my own personal Athena Poliás.”

“Except I’m not Greek and I have a penis.”

“I try to forget about that.”

Jensen sighed and, finally, Dad seemed to get that this was meant to be a two-man job. They’d both come down to visit me, and although it had seemed a strange combination for a random visit in February, I hadn’t given it much thought until now. Dad put his arm around me, squeezing. His arms were long and thin, but he’d always had the vise-like grip of a man much stronger than he looked. “Ziggs, you’re a good kid.”

I smiled at Dad’s version of an elaborate pep talk. “Thanks.”

Jensen added, “You know we love you.”

“I love you, too. Mostly.”

“But . . . consider this an intervention. You’re addicted to work. You’re addicted to whatever fast track you think you need your career to follow. Maybe I always take over and micromanage your life—”

“Maybe?” I cut in. “You dictated everything from when Mom and Dad took the training wheels off my bike to when my curfew could be extended past sunset. And you didn’t even live at home anymore, Jens. I was sixteen.”

He stilled me with a look. “I swear I’m not going to tell you what to do just . . .” he trailed off, looking around as if someone nearby might be holding up a sign prompting the end of his sentence. Asking Jensen to keep from micromanaging was like asking anyone else to stop breathing for ten short minutes. “Just call someone.”

“‘Someone?’ Jensen, your point is that I have no friends. It’s not exactly true, but who do you imagine I should call to initiate this whole get-out-and-live thing? Another grad student who’s just as buried in research as I am? We’re graduate students in biomedical engineering. It’s not exactly a thriving mass of socialites.”

He closed his eyes, staring up at the ceiling before something seemed to occur to him. His eyebrows rose when he looked back to me, hope filling his eyes with an irresistible brotherly tenderness. “What about Will?”