He had done his own arithmetic on his own future and arrived, coldly and clearly, at us.

And there is a particular thing that does to you — to have someone weigh their entire life against yours, deliberately, with full knowledge of the cost, and choose yours.

It is different from being loved impulsively.

Anyone can love you in a warm moment.

This was love as a decision, love that had sat down with a calculator and a map and a list of everything it would have to give up, and had chosen anyway, chosen with its eyes open, chosen me and Evelyn over the sky and the service and the version of himself he’d spent years building.

I had spent seven months believing I had been abandoned by the one brother I had left.