I looked out the window of the study where I had come to make this call, the grounds below me in the full morning light, the fountain and the cypress trees and the long shadows going short as the sun climbed. I thought about the marble floor and the desk and twenty seven years of the second son and all of it, the whole accumulated architecture of a family that had built itself on the principle that strength was the only currency and had been discovering in the last twenty four hours the specific, imprecise, unmeasurable cost of that principle applied without exception.
"We are brothers," I said. "Whatever else is also true, that is true."
Liam was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," he said. "We are."
I ended the call.
I sat in the study for a moment with the phone on the desk in front of me a
