But grief does not live in the top part of your mind.

It lives somewhere older and more animal, and that older place did not care about contracts or duty or the chain of command.

It only knew that when the worst thing happened, I had looked around for someone bigger than me to lean on, and there had been no one — only an empty chair where a big brother was supposed to be.

And so the older, unfair part of me had taken that emptiness and slowly turned it into a grudge, because a grudge is easier to hold than a wound.