If she wanted, Lucy thinks, she could easily protest to that. The circumstances of her leaving were entirely different, when Daniel had just died and her only real alternative would have been going off to Europe with their parents, and even then, it hadn't been quite as easy as all that to get them to agree. Even so, she knows he's right. Up until she decided to forgo college and stay in New York, she did have it easy, at least comparatively so.

"Oh, but it does," she says, as sincerely as she can, though the effort it takes to keep from laughing is visible in the look on her face. "Don't knock it 'till you've tried it, Max. I'm sure all those dishes Dad washed to put himself through college really taught him a lot about life."