“Heather,” he said softly. “Let’s go home.”

We didn’t go to a public hospital. I asked him to take us straight to our family estate in Nashville, where private doctors, security, and absolute privacy were waiting.

Late that evening, once Phoebe was resting with a fresh bandage on her forehead, my three brothers sat down with me at the long conference table.

Grant laid out financial dossiers on Vaughn Enterprises. He had not slept and had not changed and had been on a plane; he is the eldest, he was thirty-one when our father died, and he has never in his life asked me a question he could answer for me instead.

My second brother, a corporate attorney named Ronald, set down a thick black folder. Ronald reads a room slowly and out loud, which infuriates everyone, and which is the reason he has never once been wrong in front of a judge.

My youngest brother, Arthur, opened his laptop. Arthur owns a media network and is the softest man I know, and he has never been able to sit still in a room where someone he loves is hurt; he has to do something with his hands.