It had to do, I think now, with freedom’s sudden anarchy — the way freedom can descend upon your life, out of nowhere, a tornado touching down. Abrupt, unasked for, but freedom nonetheless and therefore accompanied by, even in the holy mess it leaves behind, a germ of exhilaration.

It was so unexpected, maybe, because I’d always thought of getting married as the thing that gave me freedom, not the thing from which I would one day be emancipated. A husband was a get-out-of-jail-free card, I thought on some level, a fail-safe, because how could I be dragged into the mire of Kelli-servitude alongside my mother if I had a husband? (“To look after” seems like it should be the final clause of that sentence but, of course, the idea was not to have to look after anyone. It was more about attaching myself to a legally binding anchor of sorts. Securely lodged. Immovable.)

And maybe Irene knew all this. In fact, it occurred to me as I sat blinking across from Trevor: of course she did. She knew I’d lost my get-out-of-jail-free card. And likely she’d known from the beginning what an idiocy it was to think of a marriage — of all things — as such. My stomach clenched miserably with fresh bereavement. It felt as if Irene had died all over again, right there in the kitchen, in my arms. My mother had known what I was going through, I realized, the entire time. Because my mother was no fool. She felt it. She got it. And I could have come home. I could have spoken with her. I could have asked for her comfort, and she would have given it to me. She would have. But now she was not here. Only Trevor was here now — her ruddy, big-shouldered avatar. Her chosen son.

22

The dishes still were not cleared and Kelli had long ago left the table to sit at her perch by the window. But it was late now, going on ten. I knew this because I could hear Kelli making the soft, inquisitive noises she always made when it was time for her before-bed snack of toast and peanut butter (a bit of chuckling and intermittently whispered Kelli-toas’ ). It felt to me like a good time to take a breather, as talking with Trevor about our mutual end-of-marriage crucibles had left me feeling raw, like I was being peeled open one strip of flesh at a time.

After Kelli was in bed, we carried our juice glasses into the living room and flopped down into opposite chairs from one another. I felt like we both should be exhausted by this point in the conversation, but there was something about having laid ourselves so emotionally bare that was sort of exciting. More than exciting, actually — thrilling. Thrilling because it was so dangerous, I think now.

So finally I understood why Trevor had been so weird and why Trevor had been so pushy and why Trevor had so much trouble negotiating boundaries when it came to Kelli and me. I had been a stranger. A stranger Trevor had nonetheless loved, because he loved Irene. But at the same time, the stranger who arrived at Irene’s deathbed and swiftly took over the house and the care of Kelli once Irene was in the ground. It had been disorienting for Trevor. After over a year of cozy nights in front of Irene’s big-screen TV, of family barbecues on Irene’s back deck and afternoons of yard work and plates of cookies and intimacies exchanged over multiple mugs of tea, Trevor was yanked back into the role of Professional Caregiver, for whom an overly familiar relationship with his clients would be a Fire-able Offence. It made his head spin. Trevor now had to back off from the family that had become his family and pretend like the previous year had never happened. And who knew what the daughter from the city would turn out to be like? The moment she caught a whiff of his relationship with Rini, she could report him, and he would lose his job. And never see Kelli again.