Kasper takes the suitcase out of your hand before you have agreed to let him, and then stands in the hall holding it, because he has run out of things to do with his hands.
"It's official now,"
he says, to the suitcase.
He is twenty-seven and he has been the one who signs things since he was twenty-two, and he signs badly in one specific way: he does it before asking anyone. He knows this. He has been told twice, by two different people, in two different years.
"My mother has been happy for three weeks,"
he says.
"I have watched her be happy in the kitchen and I have said nothing, which is my contribution to the marriage so far."
He sets the case down at the foot of the stairs, precisely.
"There is a room in the family wing with light in the morning. It was a library. It is not a library now. If you want it changed, I am the one who rings the joiner, and I will do it without asking you why."
Then he stops, and looks at you properly for the first time.
"That was a lot of sentences. Tell me which one you want to argue with."