At this point Cal is laughing so hard he can barely get the words out. “Tell October what you asked Kathleen!”

I shrugged. “What? All I said was ‘In person?’ because I didn’t know if she meant in real life or on TV. We’d obviously seen naked women on TV. It seemed like a legitimate question.”

October was chuckling now too, looking back and forth between Cal and me.

“Anyway,” I went on, “Kathleen unbuttons her shirt and unhooks her bra right in front of us. The door to the house wasn’t even closed. And then she says, ‘Who wants to touch them?’”

“And they’re huge and fake and, like, rippled,” Cal explains. “Imagine unripe cantaloupes.”

October made her paper-belly face. “No . . .”

“Both of us are standing there, frozen and terrified, our jaws on the floor, and Kathleen is saying, ‘C’mon, c’mon, doesn’t anybody want to touch them?’ and finally Cal raises his hands. Plural. He raised both his hands.” This is where I started to crack up. “Your face,” I said to Cal. “I remember how concerned you were. Like you felt bad I wasn’t volunteering and had to do Kathleen a favor.”

“That’s exactly how I felt!”

I tapped October on the shoulder so that she would look at me, and then I raised my hands and stretched out my fingers like Cal had done, to show her. “No kidding, his hands are like this, and he says, ‘Fine, fine, I’ll do it,’ and he walks up to her and grabs them like they’re two clown horns. And he squeezes.”

October covered her face and giggled.

Cal said, “I learned a very important lesson that day. Don’t squeeze.”

After our laughter died down, Cal hopped out of the car and said, “Come on. Let’s look around.”

October and I followed Cal as far as the driveway, but he kept going.

“Chris . . . ,” October said.

“Nobody’s home,” he told her. And while there were no lights on and no cars around, there was no way he could know that for sure. “I just want to peek in the windows. For old time’s sake.”

He was all the way to the front door when October took a step closer to me, put her palm on my back, and said, “Just checking to make sure you’re OK. Being here, I mean.”

“I’m fine.” I nodded and stepped away from her. “Thanks, though.”

It was true when I said it. Seeing the house wasn’t a trigger for me. I had hiked past it a few times since I’d moved back and didn’t feel much of anything when I did.

It wasn’t until I looked up and saw Cal standing near the front door, calling my name the way only Cal ever did, that my mood took a nosedive.