Ben shifted his gaze down to his drink and carefully twirled his glass, watching the liquid spin into a slow tornado. "I don't really want to talk about it," he said, though he had no faith that Aldous would let things go just at that. One might have thought that given two days to reason it out, Ben would have a better excuse by now, or at least a strategy for how to get through this conversation, but the truth was he'd been so preoccupied worrying about Melody that he hardly spared any thoughts for his brothers. He didn't even know how much Roman knew about everything, actually, but he had to know something, because it was not exactly typical for Ben to come and stay for a week straight.

"There was something I didn't know about when I decided to leave," he eventually said, taking a drink of the brandy. "That I found out when I went back to talk to her."