Will hadn’t intended on falling asleep. He’d only retired to the living room sofa because there seemed to be little else he could do. He’d tried to watch television, but the storm had knocked out the satellite signal. The day’s paper was a jumble of meaningless words. There had been no sign of Dylan.

He’d closed his eyes and had felt a soothing numbness passing through him. He’d watched distorted memories of his own boyhood in this very house pass across his mind’s eye.

Had he always felt this way about his brother, he wondered? Always brimming with such jealousy over the ease and comfort with which Dylan’s life seemed to have been blessed? Had it not been his own decision to leave home at sixteen and allow himself to grow estranged from his kin? Not even the successive deaths of both his parents was enough to lure Will back. It took discovering that Dylan had inherited the house and was now enjoying a happy marriage.

Will had learned of this turn of events through his obsessive, covert searches on social media. He was grateful for the technology that allowed him to keep tabs on Dylan cheaply and easily. It was this same medium that had allowed Will to watch Dylan’s life dissolving. Ever a sponge sopping up attention, Dylan posted regular updates about his crumbling marriage, which gave Will the privilege of watching his brother’s life crumble in real time. Only after a particularly fatalistic-sounding post about how Julie had left for good did Will finally attempt to reach out. Dylan had positively gushed over his brother’s first communication in two decades. He’d immediately invited him back to the old house. Little did he suspect that what was driving Will’s actions was not empathy but schadenfreude.

His sadistic pleasure was short-lived. Within hours of arriving home Will found his brother’s state of mind…disquieting. Whatever heartsickness Dylan had been detailing for his online friends seemed to have been replaced by a form of mania. Will had even wondered if the whole drama had been nothing more than a ploy to bait him back to this suburban trap. But to what end?

Will’s reverie was violently disrupted by a phone ringing. Blindly he fished out his cell from his shirt pocket. It was turned off.

Across the room, Dylan’s cell phone rattled upon the dining room table. Will rose and shuffled toward it.

The caller I.D. consisted of a smiling selfie of Julie, along with her name and a tiny heart icon glowing beside it. Will took up the phone and wrestled with the idea of answering it. It went still and silent before he could decide.