Ophelia, my dear.
In the past year, Grayson Wilkes had had a lot of time to himself to think. Granted, most of that time had been spent having something of a psychotic break -- but the last month or so, he'd just been thinking. His brother was dead -- by his own hand -- and his family was more on the rocks than they'd been in years. He'd spent a good deal of time regretting Amery's death, but the fact was ... if he hadn't ended his brother's life, their entire family would've suffered even more than they were suffering now. It had been a long, hard road to this conclusion, but he had to believe it.

None of this silly regressing bullshit: he was the only son of the family now, and he needed to pull himself together. Continuing to wallow was just going to drag his family through the mud again, and that wasn't something he was going to tolerate.

Truth be told, he'd been well enough for the last few weeks. He knew he should've been the one to contact Ophelia, but he'd spent the majority of his time getting back into shape (apparently not eating and subsisting mostly on grain alcohols did not do wonders for a man's figure) and finding house elves to replace the ones that he'd messily thrown out windows or through walls. He needed to know that Ophelia would still come back to him, that he was (at least in his opinion) in control of that situation.

The manor looked lovely now, though; fresh coats of paint on some of the walls, flowers in the vase by the door. Grayson himself looked for every intent and purpose like he had before his brother's death; the fire was back in his eyes and he felt sharper than ever.

No more of this failure nonsense.