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Everything was perfect.
    Until the day their mother got sick.
    Eleanor Ellis was as bright a presence as her youngest son. She baked cookies and cakes for Buckton’s annual Fourth of July picnic, sang in the church choir, hosted a bridge club for a dozen friends, and volunteered at the library. She was loved by one and all, but especially by her sons. To Hank and Pete, Eleanor was an angel. She fed and clothed them, kissed away the pain of their many scrapes, and guided them as they grew toward manhood. It was because of her that they stayed on the straight and narrow. They didn’t want to disappoint her.
    But then one day, now more than a year back, in the cold of January, Eleanor had collapsed in the kitchen while making dinner. For a week, she’d talked about being tired, worrying that she was coming down with the flu. After a couple of days in bed without improvement, they’d taken her to the doctor.
    It was cancer.
    Tears were shed. Pills and promises were given, but none of them worked. Four weeks after she fell, their mother was dead.
    In Eleanor’s sudden, shocking absence, Hank stepped into the void her death had left. He cooked and cleaned. He paid the bills. He helped Pete with his homework; with the loss of their mother, the brothers grew even closer. Unfortunately, Hank did all these things because his father couldn’t.
    Without his wife, Myron Ellis fell apart, struggling to find the strength to carry on. A woodworker by trade, he started to let jobs slide, failing to complete the work he’d been hired for. Hank, who had apprenticed to his father for years, managed to keep up, apologizing to their unhappy buyers. As the months passed, Myron grew sullen, quick to let his temper loose. He stopped shaving, grew a patchy beard, and wore the same clothes for a week at a time.
    But worst of all was his drinking.
    Myron had never been a teetotaler, but the only drinking Hank could remember him doing was having the occasional beer while he listened to a ballgame in the workshop. With Eleanor’s death, that changed. Myron began to drink whiskey straight out of the bottle in a misguided attempt to drown his sorrows, not stopping until he passed out in the workshop, the kitchen, wherever he happened to fall. Hank would haul his father to the shower and pour him cups of steaming black coffee to try to sober him up, all while being yelled at, insulted by a downtrodden, broken man whom Hank still loved with all his heart.
    Month by month, week by week, even day by day, the stress mounted for Hank, eating away at him. He didn’t think it could get worse.
    But it did.
    Three months ago, on a rainy night not unlike this one, Pete had been killed in a car crash, and as far as everyone in Buckton was concerned, it was Hank’s fault.
    Because of him, his brother was dead.
      
    Soon after Hank had gone back to working on the chair, his head snapped up at the sound of glass breaking, the noise loud enough to cut through the din of the storm. He looked out the workshop’s double doors toward the house. A light was on in the kitchen. He heard shouting but couldn’t make out any of the words. Hank knew who was yelling.
    It was his father.
    For a moment, Hank considered letting Myron be. He’d run out of steam eventually. It wouldn’t be the first time.
    But Hank wasn’t that kind of son. He took a deep breath, put down his tools, and headed into the storm, hurrying against the stiff rain.
    Myron was in the kitchen. He sat at the small table, his head on his arm, his mouth smushed against the wood. An empty glass lay on its side, a long trail of whiskey leading over the table’s edge to pool on the floor. A half-empty bottle was clutched tightly in his hand. Soup was splattered against the wallpaper on the other side of the room, sliding down into a heap of food and broken dish.
    “What happened?” Hank asked.
    “Soup was too cold…” his father mumbled.
    “And that was reason enough to throw it across the