Jessica turned back to me and we looked at each other.

“You have been talking to people about me,” I said.

Jessica did a thing with her body then. I could see her sort of settle into herself as she faced me — becoming more aware of her physical self. It was as if she were tightening her core muscles yet keeping everything else loose — making her body taut and soft all at once — ready, as it were, to rumble. I thought of the last yoga class I took, how the instructor had told us to ground ourselves, to imagine roots growing out of our feet and into the earth. That’s what it seemed to me that Jessica was doing. She was grounding herself.

“I have been talking to people about you,” Jessica repeated. And I noticed she didn’t repeat these words as if in disbelief, as if to dismiss them as nonsense. She wasn’t denying it. I experienced another oceanic whoosh of blood into my face and my hands twitched but I had the feeling from Jessica’s new posture that if I tried to slap her again she would step deftly to the side and maybe flip me over her shoulder.

“You admit it?” I said.

“I am trying to sell your house. So yes, I have been talking to people about you.”

“About me and Kelli!” I shouted. “You think I can’t take care of Kelli!”

“I think you can’t take care of Kelli,” Jessica repeated. On some level, even though I couldn’t really appreciate it in the moment, it was fascinating how Jessica was negotiating me. She was employing strategies — strategies she had obviously learned well via a lifetime of therapy, and that she’d had occasion to use in the past. She’d rooted herself to the pavement of my mother’s driveway and now was taking measured breaths, repeating my words back at me, taking her time, refusing to be drawn into the blood-whooshing current of my anger. It intimidated me. I was not grounded, I knew. I was all over the place. I was overhead, swooping amongst the treetops, grasping at branches.

“That’s not true, Karen. I do think you can take care of Kelli. But I also think you could use some help.”

“So you blow the whistle on me? You report us to social services?”

“No!” said Jessica, looking more stunned than she’d been by the slap. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Then why were you acting so weird the day we left Kelli in the car? You went home after that and you called them, didn’t you?”

“Are you kidding?” said Jessica. “I was acting weird because that day was insane.”

“Well, she asked me about that day — the Adult Protection worker who called.”

Jessica’s face lost its tension all at once. “Oh, Karen,” she said. “Oh no.”

“Yes!” I said, almost in triumph. “Someone reported it and that someone also told them about the night Kelli got sick. Both times she got sick. And you were there.”