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Then he looks back at the folder, though he doesn’t turn the page. “My father disliked hospitals. He disliked losing authority even more. Dalton was one of the few people he allowed near him without argument.”

“So they were close?”

Alester is quiet for a moment. The silence isn’t long, but it changes the room slightly.

“Close is not the word I would use.”

I wait.

He continues, “My father trusted him. That was rarer.”

There it is again. Something carefully placed. Not emotion, exactly, but the outline of where emotion would be if Alester allowed it to show.

I imagine Dalton younger. Not young, maybe, but younger than now. Standing in rooms like this one, speaking to an old, powerful man who didn’t want to be sick. Being trusted by him. Being listened to by him.

It’s not hard to imagine. Dalton has that effect on people. The infuriating certainty. The calm. The way he asks a question and somehow makes answering feel like the only logical next step. I wonder what it did to Alester, watching his father give that trust to someone outside the family.

“You sound like that bothered you,” I say. The words are out before I decide whether they are wise.

Alester’s face doesn’t change. That is almost confirmation.

“Do I?”

“A little.”

He sits back in his chair. For the first time since I entered his office, the folder seems less important than whatever is happening across the desk.

“My father was a difficult man,” he says.

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” he agrees. “It isn’t.”

I don’t know whether to be impressed or unsettled.

Possibly both.

He looks toward the windows. The city is bright behind him, all glass and height and distance. When he speaks again, his voice is as calm as before, but quieter.

“Dalton was useful to him in a way family was not,” he says simply.

“Families can be useless in medical situations,” I say carefully.

“I’m sure.”

“No, I mean it. People panic. They overcompensate. They take things personally. Doctors can be easier because they have a role.”

Alester looks at me. Something flickers in his expression, but it’s gone almost immediately. “You’re defending him,” he says.

My face warms before I can stop it. “I’m explaining a possibility,” I say, looking away.

Alester studies me in a way that makes me feel, suddenly, as if I have stepped closer to something than I meant to.

Then he says, “He inspires that.”

I frown. “What?”

“Defense.”