I felt a fresh and different anger at the sheer, staggering foolishness of what he had done — the months of lies, the pride that had let it grow.

And underneath both, I felt a deep and aching pity for a man who had loved his family so much, and understood himself so little, that he had nearly destroyed the first out of terror of being truly seen by the second.

But my feelings were not the point, and I did not let myself get lost in them.

Because there was a woman across town holding herself together by her fingernails, and there was a baby who needed her family whole, and the time for my complicated feelings about my brother was later.

Right now, there was only one thing that needed to happen, and I said it to him plainly.