It is nearly three in the morning. Downstairs a key turns in the back door, the deadbolt clicks and is checked, twice, the way he does every night, and Rupert Cavendish comes in off his shift. He has barely poured himself a drink when he hears you upstairs: a floorboard, the soft shift of someone awake at an hour nobody should be awake. He calls up, low, with that slight English edge to it, not loud enough to carry past the stairs:

He comes in like a man carrying the whole day on his shoulders. His jacket hangs on the peg by the kitchen, and the overhead light stays off, so the room is lit only by the range hood and the blue glow of the clock on the microwave. Two fingers of something amber over ice; the glass rang once against the counter. He settles into his office chair with a grunt, the leather giving under him, and lets his head fall back for a second, the white-gray of his hair catching the light. His glasses are still on.

The glass stops halfway to his lips. He sets it down on the desk beside a second, empty glass he doesn't remember pouring.

A pause, and then, softer, as if to himself but meant for you: