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“As I thought,” Tess muttered. She turned to Patrick. “You want breakfast?”

He nodded but didn’t take his gaze from Gunner. He wondered how long his brother had been here, taking up space in Tess’s kitchen. How long would the bender last this time? “I went to see Emily,” Patrick said. “Knocked on her door.”

Gunner shrunk, the great hulking brute of a man collapsing in on himself. “What’d she say?”

“Says she’ll take you back, so long as the whiskey and bluff stay behind.” Patrick stared a hole right through his brother’s head.

Gunner swallowed thickly, ran his tongue over his dry lips, probably tasting the final remnants of bluff. A glimmer of hope sparked his muddy eyes. Their father’s eyes. “She’ll have me home?” he asked, words wobbling. He leaned forward to hear the answer, bottle slipping sideways.

Patrick took it from him, then emptied it into the sink. “It took some convincin’, but yes. God help her.”

“Thank you, brother,” Gunner said quietly, somewhat brokenly. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands and Patrick saw something pitiful in him. A kicked dog. “Clean yourself up, Gun. She ain’t givin’ you more chances after this one. You hear me?”

He nodded, wiping his hands on his pants. “I’ll straighten out,” he said, to himself more than anyone else. “Tell her for me, will you? And tell her… tell her I love her.”

“Tell her yourself,” Patrick said, disgust in his voice. “She’s a good woman.”

“I know.”

“You ain’t gonna trick another into marrying you.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Patrick said, louder than before. Heat rose from his collar and Gunner could see it. He pressed his lips together.

Patrick stepped close, then knelt until their eyes were level. “Then don’t fuck up again,” he ordered. “Next time she kicks your arse to the street, I won’t darken her doorstep on your behalf.”

Gone was the big brother who’d have clocked Patrick in the chin for daring to speak down to him. The man who would sooner die than let another man stand over him.

Gunner Colson was nearly a husk now, carrying around the wet weight of someone barely recognizable. He nodded, sniffing and wiping his nose on his cuff. “This’ll be the last time, Pat. I swear it.”

He hadn’t always been so pitiful. The Gunner of their childhood had been strong. Impenetrable. Admired. He had taught Patrick how to relight discarded cigarette stubs, how to throw a punch, which schoolbooks had the nude models sketched onto the pages. He had pulled Charlie Fawcett by the collar all the way to the old quarry and threatened to throw him over the side after he’d taken Donny’s lunch.

He’d been a force to be reckoned with until he’d been sucked down those mines. He had come back up much like the rest—hollow, afraid, in desperate need of some relief.

“It’s just the walls, Pat,” Gunner said, his voice whisper-thin now. Patrick knew he was moments from losing consciousness. “The walls keep fuckin’ fallin’ in on me.”

Patrick was familiar with the sensation—the weight of the tunnels pressing inward, puncturing organs, skull cracking beneath the pressure, the whole world dark and desperate. Calamitous panic. Fear. Sometimes Patrick woke with his blood screaming in his ears.

“You’re aboveground now, Gun,” Patrick told him, taking his brother’s slack head in his hands. “Look around you. No dirt. No struts.”

“No fuckin’ canaries,” he said, smiling wetly.

“No canaries,” Patrick agreed. “You’re a man who wears a nice suitnow.” He patted Gunner’s shoulder once, then stood straight again. “I need you on your feet again soon. There’s business.”

“There’s always business,” muttered Tess from behind them. She was stirring something that smelled like a stew. “All this bloody business, and never any peace.”

She wasn’t referring to Colson & Sons, of course. These days they had housekeepers, cooks, barkeeps. No, it wasn’t the inn that kept that bitter lament on Tess Colson’s tongue. It was the Miners Union. Yet another thing their father had burdened her with.

Patrick sighed, turning back toward the door. “There’s a community meeting tonight,” he reminded her.

“Don’t I know it,” she murmured. “You’re not stayin’ for breakfast?”

He shook his head. He didn’t want to stay here another minute looking at his dosed brother in the chair of his missing father. “It’s a busy day,” he said. He donned his coat again, then jutted a finger in Gunner’s direction. “He can’t have hard liquor at the bar anymore, Ma. Tell the keeps.”

She looked for a moment as though she might argue. But she glanced at her eldest son and bit the inside of her cheek again. Nodded.

Gunner had dozed off.