"I could stand," Caleb said. His voice cracked again, and this time he didn't hate it. "Doesn't mean I didn't want you to look."
"I know," said Mom. "I know, honey. I'm looking now."
She reached across the table, and this time he didn't move his hand. She held it. Her hand was cold and smelled like the mint mouthwash from work, and the gray smudge from the pencil came off on his knuckles, next to the grease from Grandpa's barn, and he didn't wipe either one away.
"Jordan's not your favorite either," he said after a minute. "Is he."
"No," she said. "He's just the one that's drowning right now. Someday it'll be you. Something will happen — it always does, to everybody — and you'll be the one who needs it, and he'll be the one on the shore, and I'll come for you. I swear to God I'll come for you. And I'll try really hard not to leave him standing there by himself while I do it." She squeezed his hand. "You can help me with that. If you want. You can help me keep an eye on each other. That's the only way it works, with three people. Everybody watches everybody."
Caleb thought about the front door in October. Move, Jord.
"Yeah," he said. "I can do that."
They sat there a while longer. The refrigerator hummed. From the living room, faint as a radio in another house, he could hear the oceany music of the lighthouse game, still going; Jordan had snuck back down after bedtime to play the single-player tutorial, the only part you could play alone, which was basically just walking around a rock in the rain. Mom heard it too. She looked up at the ceiling, and then at Caleb, and raised an eyebrow.
"I'll go get him," Caleb said.
"Tell him ten more minutes."
"I'll tell him five."
"That's why you're the good one," said Mom, and then caught herself, and laughed, and shook her head. "Strike that. Tell him ten."
* * *