Whatever the news had done to me, holding her, it had done something at least as large to him, alone in his car with nothing but the road and the knowledge of what our family had cost our sister.

Grief is a great leveler.

It had reached into my formidable brother and found the frightened, sorrowful man who had always been in there somewhere under the deals and the armor, and it had brought him out, and he arrived in that parking lot not as an adversary I had to manage but as a brother I had missed for nine years without ever admitting it.

He came through the front doors, and his eyes went immediately to the bundle in my arms.