The uncertainty of my poor poor brother when he tries to talk to my dad, he knows that the love is earned rather than intrinsic, even though no one has ever admitted it, and I don’t know if anyone even consciously knows. My mother is the kind of woman that would let her doubt become a static behind the scream of the lies she tells herself over and over, and my father doesn’t have a mind big enough in that regard to imagine what his wife does while he’s away on business. But he knows my brother is not his, subconsciously, and has never loved him as such.