The day settled on our mansion like a weighted blanket, mirroring the awkwardness that had seeped into the family fabric. We'd survived sixteen years together, a unit capable of wrestling any external force into submission. But this disturbance came from within. This time, I was the epicenter.
They couldn't fight me. Not really. Not the one they loved most, the boy who'd grown into this unsettling presence among them.
Scratch that—it was worse. Every single one of them was fighting a primal urge, a clawing urge to simply cling to me, to anchor themselves in the eye of this strange storm swirling around their brother, their son.
I could feel it radiating from Mom, from Sarah, even from the usually detached Charlotte: a desperate, almost painful need to touch, to connect, to reassure themselves against the unnerving changes they sensed crackling in my aura. But they held back. Politeness, fear, confusion—they shackled the instinct.
