He recognizes the change and it's like falling. Like they'd both been trying to make the leap from one side of a canyon to the other and had just barely scratched the far side with their fingernails before they fell short. He's sad for a reason he cannot define.

"I know you'd hate it if you thought I was checking up on you," he says. "Figured I'd have more luck if I brought some incentive along." He means the bottle of whiskey, of course, but somehow thinking that he could ply her with alcohol to get her to open up about what happened seems...what, manipulative? Dishonest? He hadn't meant to be. Hell, he likes to think that she knows him well enough by now to trust him not to play the authorial angle.