They apparently were talking about buttons. John was too bewildered to even have a proper reaction to his brother's statement; he just looked down, dumbly, and noticed that there was, in fact, a button missing from his coat. How had Evander even noticed it? It was a black coat, with black buttons — it was hardly a glaring mistake. If he'd been here in a uniform with dark blue cloth and shining, polished gold buttons, that would have been one thing. Anyone would have noticed that. But this seemed so minor — particularly compared to the events of the day, to the ceremony, to everything else.

"I dunno," he responded with a shrug. He was vaguely aware that it was a lame answer, but it wasn't as though he had a better one. Who kept track of buttons that way? Evander couldn't possibly have been expecting a long and intricate tale surrounding the loss of the button. It had probably just gotten loose and eventually fallen off, before he'd noticed it. Maybe it had fallen off just that morning. He probably would have noticed if it had been missing when he'd gone to put it on, if only because it would have interrupted the mechanical motion of doing the buttons up one after another. Then again, this entire day had been so surreal and he had been so numb that he might not have noticed if he'd put his trousers on backwards.

"I s'pose I lost it," he mumbled. It was probably somewhere nearby, either on the way up to or down from the funeral site, but hell if he was going to go back and look for it. Someone could magic him a new button.