“In Leo’s company, Jack felt like a lesser version of his older brother. Not as intelligent, interesting, or successful, an identity that had attached to him in high school and had never completely gone away. At the beginning of ninth grade, some of Leo’s friends had christened Jack Leo Lite and the denigrating name stuck, even after Leo graduated.”

As the alpha child of the siblings, Leo dominates in several regards. This quote suggests that the Plumb family dynamics were established when the siblings were young and that Jack and the others cannot break free from those old patterns. This quote provides an explanation for Jack’s constant status-seeking as an adult: He is constantly attempting to measure up to Leo.

“[Leonard Plumb] was happy to set aside some funds to provide a modest safety net for his children’s future, but he also wanted them to be financially independent and to value hard work. He’d grown up around trust fund kids—knew many of them still—and he’d seen the damage an influx of early money caused.”

Though he is deceased when the novel takes place, this quote provides a glimpse at Leonard Plumb Sr.’s personality and character. He seeks to raise wise and capable children who are successful by their own means as well as independent. This image of the Plumb father serves as a foil to memories Melody has of their mother as a parent.

“It never occurred to Leonard that evening […] [that the funds would] inflate to numbers beyond their wildest dreams. He never imagined as the funds grew so, too, would his children’s tolerance for risk, for doing the one thing Leonard had repeatedly warned them not to do, ever, in any avenue of life, from the time they were old enough to understand: count the chickens before they hatched.”

Leonard’s intent for the trust contradicts the way his children—namely, Jack and Melody—grow to regard it. Both make life decisions based on the certainty that the trust will make these expenses possible. Their respective spouses are more in line with Leonard’s original thinking: believing it to be unwise to live as though the trust is a guarantee.