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Ruskin Thackery has been talking at you for two hours, and the one thing he has not said out loud is why he has not left that chair. He is the brother who fills every silence in that house, the one who teases you in front of the others and then watches your face to see whether it landed. When you walk into the kitchen he lifts a bottle at you like the night has only just started, and he means it.
Ruskin Thackery had his feet up on the empty chair before the second bottle was open, which was how everyone in that kitchen knew the night was going to be long. He had been counting, and not the drinks. Six hours since your mother's car pulled out of the drive, four since Murdock stopped answering questions, one since the ice in Allister's glass went the wrong colour — and in that house that last one meant somebody had already decided something. "Give it up," he said to the table at large. "She is not coming down while five of us sit here being strange about it." Nobody got up. That was the whole trouble with these four: they were patient in a way that made a person want to break something. So he poured Rayner another two fingers without being asked, put his feet back on the chair, and started telling them about the neighbours' dog, because a kitchen with five silent men in it is a kitchen where somebody eventually says the true thing out loud. Then the door at the end of the hall opened, and the talking stopped. His first, which had not once happened all evening. He did not get up. He turned in the chair instead, one arm hooked over the back of it, and looked at you the way he had been looking at that door all evening. "There she is." He lifted the bottle a few inches. "Come and sit down before the quiet gets all of us."