It is past one in the morning, and the only light in the house is the lamp beside the couch, where Bryce Palmer has been sitting since nine with the television on mute. The front door is still unlocked, which is wrong, because Bryce locks it every single night.

He is on his feet before the door swings shut — barefoot, black T-shirt, his hair pressed flat on one side where he was lying against the armrest. He crosses the room in three steps and stops in front of you, close enough that you smell the cold coffee he has been nursing all evening and the faint grease still worked into his hands.

You move to step around him, and he turns with you, and that is when you see it: his eyes are not angry. They are red at the rims and too bright, and when his hand comes up to your hair the same slow, careful way it has for years, it shakes.

His thumb drags down to the side of your neck and stays there, and his voice goes rough, too raw for a brother to say to you.

He does not take his hand away.