John dropped the letter as though it were on fire.

“Oh, Jesus. Hal …”

His brother had risen from the desk and was swaying, his face blank with shock and the same grimy, crumpled white as the letter.

John seized his brother, holding him as hard as he could. Hal felt like a tailor’s dummy in his arms, save for a deep shudder that seemed to pass through him in long, rolling waves.

“No,” Hal whispered, and his arms tightened round John’s shoulders with a sudden, convulsive strength. “No!”

“I know,” John whispered. “I know.” He rubbed his brother’s back, feeling the bony shoulder blades under the red broadcloth, repeating, “I know,” at intervals, as Hal shuddered and gasped for breath.

“Shh,” John said, rocking slowly from foot to foot, taking his brother’s reluctant weight with him. He didn’t expect Hal to shush, of course; it was just the only vaguely soothing thing he could think of to say. The next natural thing would have been to say, “It’ll be all right,” but naturally, it never would.

He’d been here before, he thought dimly. Not in a cluttered office; it had been in the sala of an old house in Havana, a painted angel with spread wings fading on the plaster wall, who watched with compassion as he held his mother as she wept over the death of his cousin Olivia and her small daughter.

His throat had a lump the size of a golf ball in it, but he couldn’t give way now, any more than he had done in Havana.

Hal was starting to wheeze in earnest; John could hear the gasp of his inhaled breath, the faint whistle as it went out.

“Sit down,” John said, and steered him to a chair. “You’ve got to stop now. Any more and you won’t be able to breathe and I bloody don’t know what to do about that. So you just bloody have to stop,” he added firmly.

Hal sat, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. He was still shuddering, but the first shock of grief had passed, and John heard him now blowing out his breath and hauling it in again in a rhythmic, measured way that must be the technique Claire Fraser had taught him for not dying of asthma. John was—not for the first time in their shared acquaintance—grateful to her.

He pulled up another chair and sat down, feeling as though his own insides had been scooped out. For a few seconds, he couldn’t think. About anything. His mind had gone completely blank. He was gazing beyond Hal to a small table, though, and on it was a bottle of something. He got up and fetched the bottle, pulled the cork with his teeth, and took a gulp of the contents, not caring what it was.

It was wine. He swallowed, breathed, then took Hal’s hand and wrapped it round the bottle.

“Dottie’s alive,” he said, and sat down. “Remember, she’s alive.”