It was hard to be a seventeen-year-old with more than three times the net worth of your parents combined. It was hard, and no one understood. But her relative riches meant Nell Lawson could provide her elder brothers with hella nice meals. Not that she often had to, because Marcus had a job, and a wife who was pretty cool, and Carson had been in the military. Mostly she did it because she liked to.

So after her fancy dinner with her parents, she booked a room at her favorite DC restaurant and caught a flight out. First class meant no one looked askance at her as she texted with her elder brothers; it also meant people harassing her for signatures didn’t really happen. She kicked up her feet and slept the whole way.

At the restaurant, she settled into the room and ordered a fizzy wine analogue to wait. They wouldn’t be late. She never ate here with them unless she had important news. They wouldn’t be late.

The last time Nell had invited Carson and Marcus to dinner here, it had been to announce her first booking of a major indie film contract, and Carson was expecting nothing short of stupendous for her to have brought them here again. Hi, I just wanted to see you, would have necessitated a more hole-in-the-wall place. I can’t stand our parents and want to b***h with like minded individuals would have involved a gelato bar.

“A private room,” Carson observed as he and Marcus followed the hostess towards the back of the restaurant. “Kind of says don’t freak out, but also that she expects us to.”

“I’ve got three possibilities off the top of my head,” said Marcus. “Jenn’s pregnant, she’s pregnant, or the patriarch’s got cancer.”

“Yeah,” said Carson, as the hostess pushed the curtain aside for them. “I don’t like any of those.”

They took their seats. “What’s the occasion?” Carson asked, raising his eyebrows at his kid sister.

They showed up. Of course they did. Nell smiled at Marcus and Carson in turn. It was super weird to know they got to hang out, like, all the time, while Nell was jetting around like an a*****e and wearing Louboutins. She almost would've preferred getting to pal around with her brothers. "If you want alcohol," she said, "you're gonna have to order it for your own selves. Still seventeen over here." She'd be eighteen soon. Her newest film would really get going then, like, once she was old enough to act the scenes.

"Dad's running for President," she said, without further preamble or hugs. "He told me last night 'cause he wants me there when he announces it. He wanted it to be a surprise but I knew you guys wouldn't like it and telling you over the phone seemed like dicks, so, hi. How are you guys doing? Marc? How is Lou?"

It was a shitty segue, but she didn't have to be charming with her brothers. They'd changed her diapers, after all.

It was probably for the better that they hadn’t gotten drinks yet, because Carson expected that he would have done a truly marvelous spit-take, and also that Marcus would have done more or less the same. “He wanted it to be a surprise,” Carson managed, breaking the silence. He snuck a look at his brother - Marcus didn’t look quite ready to talk, but Marcus had been older than Carson when they were adopted. He had more memories of their birth parents and less reason to consider him part of this family (besides that Carson and Nell both stubbornly insisted that he was).

“Okay,” said Marcus mildly. He did not say anything else.

“Why would he want that to be a surprise for his own children?” asked Carson. His heart did an odd sort of leap. “Are we being disowned and written out of the will?”

He didn’t think that Jenn would ever allow that.

“Lou’s doing okay or,” prompted Nell, who approached Marcus’s unwillingness to consider himself part of the family with the same kind of sweet manipulativeness as she applied to bitchy coworkers. The waiter poked his head in and she looked at both of them, collected orders and handed them over before settling back in her chair. “Mom would freak out if he tried that,” she said. “I think, and I am not a crazy old white guy so take this with a grain of salt, I think--maybe a whole margarita of salt--anyway, I think he didn’t want to think about how ******** inconvenient it’s going to be for all of us, like, especially for me, because I’m supposed to be promoting Shallows and it’s hard to do that when everyone wants to ask about your dad trying to be president.”

He really should just try for minority whip, according to House of Cards that was sort of a thing. Dad would be good at that, she thought. “He wants to know if you’re coming home for Thanksgiving,” she told Carson. “I told him you had a new girlfriend and wanted to meet her family then.”

“Lou’s doing great,” said Marcus, who sounded like he might just have honestly forgotten to answer the question in all the hubbub over their father’s presidential ambitions. Carson was going to assume that was what had happened and not that his older brother was being deliberately rude. “She can ride her bike with no handlebars and she’s reading at a fifth-grade level.”

Carson sighed - Nell’s appraisal seemed about accurate, because the patriarch had never thought about anyone else’s convenience in his life. “I guess on the bright side, none of us use his last name.” That didn’t mean that no one was ever going to figure out whose kid he was (in the eyes of an adoption court back in the 90s, anyway), but it might just slow them down.

“As for Thanksgiving,” he added, “you are my favorite sister, and do you think Mom would be up for Christmas in New York without him? Or something? Or am I just not going to be able to see her without also seeing him until December of next year? Because that would suck. I like our mother.”

He was pretty sure this was how supervillains got their start.

She nodded, but then paused. “Wait. Isn’t she a little young to be taking the handlebars off her bike? do you mean…” Nell cocked her head to the side. She hadn’t actually ever really had bike lessons? She’d sort of been put on a bike and told to figure it out. Go figure.

The waiter brought wine. She eyed it longingly and then sighed and leaned back with her sparkling lemonade. “Just because we don’t use it doesn’t mean they won’t find us,” she said. “If they don’t, they’re shitty reporters. You know?” Nell smiled, a little crooked. “I think mom will come down here for Christmas if we all plan to be here. She wants to meet your girlfriend, you know.”

Carson gave Nell a bit of an odd look - he, too, was just now realizing she had never properly learned to ride a bike. There were a lot of things you missed out on when you started your career on Barney and Friends, including any and all of the usual childhood touchstones that made you able to have a conversation with other people without sounding like a space alien. “She may have already met Elke, actually?” said Carson, accepting his beer from the returning waiter. “Her dad’s in politics. They might have crossed paths - but it would have been a few years ago.”

“Christmas is kind of far out to be planning anything,” he added, not wanting to sound presumptuous. Did he still want to be dating Elke come December? Of course. Did he think he would be? Yes. Did he want to jinx it? Hell no. “But at the same time, I’m not exactly eager to go planning something the patriarch’ll find a way to shoehorn himself into.”

“Shut up,” said Nell, a little impressed. “So you’re dating some politician’s daughter and Dad isn’t trying to make you levy that into campaign support?”

She shrugged. “I’ll bite the bullet. I’m better publicity than the two of you put together, you know? I have brand recognition with a certain subset of twenty-year-olds who all want to bone me.”

There had been an incident with a stalker. That was why she didn’t go to Texas anymore.

“Never let it be said I don’t do anything for you,” she informed him, and she spooned garlic tomato topping onto the newly-delivered bruschetta with a showgirl’s flair. “I’m thinking about stepping back from the whole showbiz thing, anyway. I’m way behind on my education and all.”

Carson glanced between his siblings. “Well,” he said, “I’m not sure Dad knows who I’m dating.” Jenn knew, of course. Carson was perfectly capable of being up-front with his mother, who was lovely and had the patience of a saint. “And frankly, I’d like to keep it that way?” He hadn’t exactly been clear with Elke about his parentage, either… He probably needed to have that conversation.

“You might get him the youth crowd, anyway,” said Carson, trying to think critically about all this, “but he’s still a republican. It’s a crowded race and the under-thirty crowd swings left. Besides, there’s a certain subset of the electorate where a wounded-in-action son makes for a way better story. You can bite the bullet, but it won’t keep him off me for long.”

Which sucked. (He’d tried a lot of ways to keep the guy off him over the years. Nothing ever worked particularly well.)

“And I’m chopped liver?” asked Marcus.

“Yes,” said Carson, “And be glad for that. Okay. Yes. Going back to school. Sounds good. Tell me more.”

"I failed junior year again," said Nell, suddenly very interested in her dinner. “So that’s three times now. Mom says I can just drop out and get my GED, since I’m basically homeschool anyway, but… I don’t know, I don’t want to be one of those people who can only act forever. Right? So I have to get a diploma and do college, and stuff.”

She hooked a lock of hair behind her ear. Over her career, she’d learned a lot of ways to not blush when she wanted to, but when it came to her academic failures (as concocted as they might be) she couldn’t help it. “I mean. I might have been… purposely failing. Don’t tell Mom. But I feel kind of burned out. And this whole campaign thing, that’s just going to make it worse. The whole summer’s already gone to press junkets and photocalls, I don’t need more of them.”

“Well,” said Marcus, stabbing the ice in his glass with his straw. “If Dad’s one thing, he’s selfish, so of course the campaign’s at an awful time.”

He had a point, thought Carson, and he would give him that, but personally he thought Nell’s third failure to pass the eleventh grade was a bigger problem. “Are you not understanding the work?” he asked, and then Nell admitted she was screwing up on purpose, and he bit his tongue. Of course it was on purpose. She was too smart for it not to be - right?

“I think you should tell Mom how you feel,” said Carson, after a moments consideration. “Like, sure, she’s your manager, but she’s got other clients? And she cares about you. She’s not, like, a stage mom.” Or, at least, not that Carson had ever observed - and he’d seen the beginnings of Nell’s career. If anything, Jenn had always been concerned that she was pushing her daughter into too much, too soon. “She only pushes you to keep doing it because she thinks its something you enjoy. If you tell her you want to take a break, it’s not like she won’t let you.”

“I do enjoy it,” Nell said. “It’s just, like, okay, so… you know… me working doesn’t just give Mom something to do, right? I have like, a lady who does press stuff, and a stylist… and I don’t know. What if people make more out of it than it is?”

She sighed. “I really wish Mom would just make me stop, so I could stop and not feel guilty about it.”

Searching for a subject change, she lit upon Marcus’s mention of their father’s flaws. “Are you guys ever going to tell me why you hate him so much? I mean, it’s personal, so you don’t have to, but I’d like to know. You know. Sometime.”

“Nell,” said Carson, setting his beer down, “I’m telling you to stop. Like officially. As your older brother who cares a lot about your wellbeing. If you want me to talk to Mom, I will?” He was sure that Nell’s concern for all of her support staff was perfectly reasonable, of course… but he was also fairly certain that they all had other clients. Or could find other clients. “You’ve been working since you were three. No one would blame you for taking a break.”

Beside him, Marcus nodded, and then said, “It’s personal. Sorry.”

Carson bit down on his tongue. If there was ever a time to go public, this was it - and Nell was surely old enough to handle the truth. Marcus had drawn a line in the sand, though, and he wasn’t going to be saying anything while his brother was still here.

He tried to shoot Nell a meaningful later sort of look. He bet he looked sort of constipated instead.

She would blame herself, but she’d wanted someone to take the decision out of her hands. At least cosmetically. And here was her way out, like, sorry everyone I’m not doing well so it’s break time! Maybe she could go to school here, near her brothers? That’d be cool. “I’d like that,” she said. “Please.”

At Marcus’s refusal, she looked from Marcus to Carson and back again, and then sighed. “Okay. Fine. It’s dropped. Someone else handle conversational steering now, I am all emotion’d out.”

Nell did not get his meaningful look. It was okay. He would just tell her later. “So,” he announced. “I’ve learned a lot about gardening lately…”