Tommy waited in silence for the kettle to boil, made his tea and brought it over to the table. He sipped it but did not speak.

Malcolm wasn’t sure how to overcome this impasse. He’d never known how to bridge the gap between himself and others, and now there was no Heather to help him. He imagined her watching this scene now. You men, she would have scolded. You men never talk to each other.

No, they had not been taught how. And yet Malcolm had never really felt like a man. He had always carried a guilty feeling of subterfuge, as though he might be found out any moment. His outside was right; his father had always approved of him in this way—of his height, his strength, his hardiness and his facility with the croft. But beneath the skin, Malcolm had never been sure what was expected of him. He was sensitive, Heather had said to him once; he thought about things deeply. She had said it fondly (perhaps with the faintest hint of exasperation too), but it had stung Malcolm. He had felt almost embarrassed, as though he’d been caught out doing something illicit. Heather had been more masculine than Malcolm in many ways, in her bluntness and her pragmatism, her ability to brush things off, to just get on with things. (She could still speak honestly, though, when she needed to. She could still say, This hurt my feelings, or, This made me happy. She could still say, I love you.)

Malcolm knew he had plenty of animal courage, the kind of physical strength his father admired. He would battle on through a storm or work through the freezing night without complaint, but he was certain, after more than sixty years on this earth, that he lacked moral courage. He had often thought he recognized in his brother a manliness that he himself lacked: John had determination and purpose where Malcolm was weak and wavering. But John had been smaller and skinnier, and their father said he was soft. Malcolm had always known this wasn’t true, that their father had them the wrong way round. He could never have said any of this out loud. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference.

Malcolm had only half learned the lessons of his father and of the world, and where did that leave him? As a kind of piecemeal man, a Frankenstein’s monster, his masculinity patched and tattered. Nonetheless, he wanted to ask now—but ask who?—whether being a man always required you to have power over somebody else. Did it have to? Were there not other ways?