Jim dropped his face into his hands, and his shoulders began to shake, and my big, grown brother wept almost silently into his palms the way he had when he was small.

I had not seen my brother cry like that since we were children, since the year our father left and Jim was seven and did not understand and I was eleven and pretended I did.

Some part of me went straight back to that year, to being the older one, the one who had to be steady so that he could fall apart.

It is a role you never really retire from.