He's like that for weeks. He doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep, he doesn't talk - he just sits on the balcony and watches the waves roll in, refusing to come in until it's too dark to see. Brian is worried, but he knows that this is what needs to happen for anything to get better.

It will eventually get better.

But then Liam stops watching the water. He stops sitting on the balcony. He doesn't get out of bed, or if he does, he pads through the house that's much too big, wandering from room to room as though he's looking or something. He is looking for something, and Brian knows he'll never find it.

One night, Brian wakes up on the couch in the living room to terrifying screams coming from upstairs. He rushes up to the master bedroom expecting Liam to be mid-nightmare, but what he finds is much, much worse: Liam is sitting straight up, curled into himself with a pillow clutched tightly in his arms, sobbing so violently that Brian thinks he might hurt himself. "Liam," he says carefully, voice breaking with an overwhelming sadness that threatens to pull him under at any moment. "Are you okay?"