“I thought you were asleep upstairs,” he said to Branwell. “Have you been gone all night?”

Branwell hung his head; his coughs subsided into wheezes. “Not all night. I just slipped out for a few hours. That’s God’s honest truth.”

“It is a sin to deceive,” Papa said, frowning in reproach, “and shameful of you to invoke God as your accomplice.”

My younger sisters, Emily and Anne, appeared in the parlor doorway. Anne, neat and unobtrusive as always, held a cloth with which she’d been dusting furniture; when she saw Branwell, distress clouded her violet eyes and gentle features. “Oh, dear,” she murmured.

Emily, tall and lanky, pushed up her leg-of-mutton sleeves. Always indifferent to her appearance, she stubbornly clung to that outmoded style of dress. She had been canning blackberry preserves, and purple stains blotched her apron. Heat had frizzed her brown hair and flushed her long face, and that day she looked even more wild and singular than usual. She glared at our brother. She had lost all tolerance for the sickness, the convulsive fits, and the unpredictable moods that Branwell inflicted upon our household.

“Well, have you all gotten a proper look at me?” Branwell said with sudden belligerence. “Then I believe I shall go to bed. I’m all done in.”

Reeling towards the stairs, he stumbled. Emily grudgingly helped me assist him up the stairs. I couldn’t help but regard with some sadness the family portrait in the stairwell. Branwell had painted that portrait. He had, when he was younger, possessed artistic talent, and Papa had sacrificed much in order to pay for painting lessons. All of us had hoped Branwell would attend the Royal Academy, but his ambitions and our dreams had come to naught. Now, awkwardly climbing the stairs, Branwell began to weep.