“You actually reported me for using home care?” I shouted.

“I didn’t report you, Karen!” said Jessica, losing her composure enough to shout back. “I’m explaining to you why I was asking around. And what I found out. Apparently each company sets its own standards. Some do background checks and some don’t —”

“Background checks?”

“It’s really odd that the company you’re using would pair a male worker with a female client. It’s really unusual. Most above-board places would never do that.”

We glared at each other for a long moment. I could feel the Valkyrie draining out of me. The conversation was becoming about something else.

“He just takes her for walks,” I said at last. “Outside. In public. It’s not like they’re ever left alone together.”

“They’re alone right now,” said Jessica, glancing again at the house. I turned and glanced at it too, more as a performance of disbelief and exasperation than to actually take it in. But when I did I saw Kelli riveted at the window and a blurry, big-shouldered shadow looming behind her.

“He’s her best friend,” I said, turning back to her.

“I thought he was her worker,” said Jessica. “I thought that’s what he was supposed to be. He’s supposed to be one or the other. He’s not supposed to be both. It’s against the rules.”

“I know that,” I said, remembering my phone call with Margot. Those lines are so easily blurred. “But people break the rules. Even my mother. She was human. Sometimes human beings just need each other and they just — reach out. She trusted him.”

“Karen,” said Jessica. She was saying my name a lot. It felt to me like another one of her therapy strategies and I had to admit, it was sort of effective. I kept flying off in all directions, propelled by a combustive mix of guilt and fear and fury, and she just kept reeling me back to earth with her patient, low-voiced Karens. “There are so many services your mother could have accessed. As a senior? With serious medical issues? As Kelli’s primary caregiver? I looked into it. She had every right to that care.”

“My mother knew what she was entitled to,” I said. “She’d been negotiating that system for years —”

“But she was elderly,” Jessica interrupted. “Maybe it got hard for her, maybe she couldn’t stand the thought of going through a whole bureaucratic rigmarole just for a bit of extra help.” And my mind flashed on the stiffened cleaning rag I’d found in the darkness of Irene’s bottom cupboards, the gunky stain left to congeal and harden beneath the fridge. Fuck it. “My point is,” continued Jessica, “Trevor is a front-line care worker.” This was the first time she had ever deigned to mention Trevor by name and I could tell, as she spat out the two syllables, she wasn’t happy about it. “If she reached out to him for help — which, sure, why wouldn’t she, he’s there, it’s convenient — his job was to report that need back to the agency. That would be his training. What he’s not supposed to do is become her personal handyman! The agency could’ve got her the help she needed. Instead, he just ended up isolating her.”