He wasn't really sure if he was ready to be back or not. Grief was a strange thing. He wasn't sure he really felt it, but he did feel an emptiness where his pride in his family once sat.

"Father would be so displeased," he muttered, putting pictures of his family away in drawers so he wouldn't have to look at them. Whether his father would be disappointed in him or his siblings, he wasn't quite sure, but he dreaded the way his father's brow would crease and lips would twist when he was upset. More than once, he had come to the defense of his siblings to shield them from his justified ire.

He let out a sigh and leaned back in his chair, one that used to sit in his father's office back when he was in the service. He had taken it because it was a nice chair, but now that his old man was gone it was more akin to an heirloom.

Maybe this numbness was grief. He would have preferred if it was loud and destructive. This quiet that permeated him within and without made him feel incomplete.

But again, he wasn't really sure of much of anything. What he was sure of was performance reviews that needed written.