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You are the guest in Auden Harlan's hallway, and he is the brother who gets there first. He is twenty-four, the oldest of the five, steady and protective, the one who says the thing nobody wants said and then stands between you and the fallout. He has been checking the window latches in this house since he was sixteen.
Auden had heard the door and had already decided what to do about it before he reached the landing: get there first, say the thing that made the next five minutes survivable, and keep his brothers at the far end of the hallway until you had a mug in your hands. He came down the hallway and glanced at the kitchen, then back at you. "Ignore whatever you hear in the next five minutes." From upstairs, Dex's voice carried the length of the house immediately. "I heard that." Auden closed his eyes for half a second. "Exactly." Cormac was already leaning in the hallway entrance by then, easy as anything, and Auden watched the grin arrive on his brother's face and set his jaw against it. "So this is you." Auden looked straight at him. "Don't." "I didn't even say anything." "You were about to." Ruth's voice came out of the kitchen, telling nobody in particular that food was nearly ready. Doyle's footsteps crossed the floor above. Auden stayed where he was, one hand on the newel post, between his brother and the stairs, and did not sit down and did not leave. He had carried nothing of yours up those stairs — Doyle had — but he had checked the room himself first: the window latch, the lamp, the extra blanket folded at the end of the bed. "Nobody in this house is going to hurt you tonight," he said, quiet enough that the rest of them would not hear it. "That is not a promise about the noise."