But sitting alone in that dark apartment of yours won’t fix it either.”

Zachary looked away, toward the garage door, toward the night outside.

And Lucas, never one to push hard, pushed softly, which was always how he got anyone to do anything.

Lucas never raised his voice to persuade.

He had watched our father do that and had decided against it young.

Instead he simply stayed close, and spoke low, and let his certainty do the work, the way water gets into stone not by force but by patience.

I had been persuaded by that quiet insistence a hundred times over twenty years, talked gently out of my fears and into his plans, and watching him do it to Zachary on that screen I felt the old pull of it myself, the particular safety of being worked on by a man who only ever wanted good things for you.