And on receiving the call to babysit with the reasoning, Bill picked up a crawl of misgiving that got much nastier and deeper-seated the closer he came to his daughter's family's house.

He'd seen Phillip uncharacteristically down earlier this month. Somewhere on the drive he began pinning and blame-slinging pre-emptively. It has to do with All This. Stress, and danger, and terrible visions, and so many things a perfectly world-eager kid shouldn't have wearing them down, but, well, blame-slinging's is, again, pre-emptive, and targeting this whole mess they're in takes the problem right to something any one or handful of them is helpless attempting to take anything up with.

The best thing he can try to do, he knows, is offer security. If he can and what it's from remains to be sussed out. From there's another "if", but one step at a time.

He enters the house. Pauses, looks around, to see if Phillip's anywhere immediately in sight, and stays put to listen.

Hears nothing, and heads, still fairly quietly, over to his room.

Raises a hand up to the side of the door, and knocks on the frame.