"A shame," he repeated with a sigh. "I cannot argue otherwise."
Vlad had never known his extended family, never mind having any siblings, and he listened with the attentiveness of someone trying to imagine what it would have been like if what they were hearing had been their life, too.
"You had a... a rhythm, a routine. That is, I suppose, how families succeed." It was then that he realized how very different his childhood had been. After his mother left, his father hadn't tolerated playing games or any of the things a typical boy his age would have done. He'd been eleven going on thirty.
"You say that you worried about them. Did any of them ever worry about you?" He was asking out of sheer curiosity, not from any sort of belief that they were wrong to not worry or anything of the sort.