Don Juan didn't like the look of how Dean drained his whiskey. He was stressed, that seemed clear, but precisely what had snagged him was less clear, at least to Don Juan. "Alright," he echoed warily. He took a small sip of his own glass to buy himself a second to think. The root of this had to be that he was worried Don Juan would collapse under the pressure of something sooner or later, and he didn't know how to convince Dean that wouldn't happen. He wasn't even necessarily convinced himself that it wouldn't happen, only that he didn't suspect the thing that might cause him to buckle would be Kaatjie. She'd either stay with her uncle or she would move in to the Dempsey estate and be chiefly raised by his mother; either way it wasn't much his concern.

"What are you thinking?" he eventually asked when he'd exhausted himself trying to guess.

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