"You do," Oz affirmed. "It was dramatic." Dramatic by Dempsey standards, even, and Dempseys had rather different metrics for melodrama than the average family. Even the worst of the fights he staged with Sina, the ones that would have stopped a ball room in their tracks while everyone nearby looked on with slack-jawed horror, only garnered a mild reaction from his parents and siblings. Partly, he imagined, they were simply more used to these things happening; with seven Dempsey offspring and all with their own peculiarities it was inevitable that someone was having some sort of scene at any given moment. Partly he suspected it was that none of them quite took anyone else in the family seriously, which meant it was hard to be properly shocked by anything. Even the news of this morning had not been especially shocking, in the end — though his mother's reaction had certainly been a sight to see.

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