“She didn’t just need help,” I argued. “She needed family. Trevor was there when my mother needed him. He wasn’t just helping around the house — it went so much deeper than that.”

“What does that mean?” said Jessica.

“He was like a son to her,” I said. “The neighbours assumed he was because that’s what she told them. That’s what she wanted him to be.”

Jessica stared at me and I realized how high-pitched and strangled my voice was now. I wasn’t angry anymore, but I was shaking.

“Karen,” said Jessica. This had to be the ninth or tenth Karen. “Don’t yoke yourself to this guy just because you feel guilty about your mother.”

“I don’t feel guilty,” I told her. “I feel grateful.”

25

I made a soup for dinner and for the first time, Trevor didn’t offer to help with the meal. He didn’t exactly argue with me, but I could tell he wasn’t thrilled about the idea of soup in general, remarking that he was “not really a soup guy.” As far as Trevor was concerned, if you couldn’t barbecue it, it didn’t qualify as cooking. I pointed out that if salads were out of the question, we’d just have to figure out new and innovative ways to serve vegetables. That got Trevor off on a somewhat passive-­aggressive rant about how soup was really just salad in disguise — it was boiled salad, he joked — which, if you thought about it, was actually pretty disgusting.

Despite Trevor’s disapproval, making the soup had soothed me. For one thing, it cancelled out the cloying smell of the Vanilla Vroom air freshener that Trevor had picked up from the drugstore earlier and blasted all throughout the house in anticipation of Jessica bringing Jason and silver-maned Nate over for the viewing. (Given Nate’s good house thumbs-up, he must not have minded the Vanilla Vroom, but the sight of the homeowner assaulting his real estate agent had likely soured him on a bid.) For another thing, Trevor talked to me as I stood meditatively chopping vegetables in the kitchen, reassuring me about Jessica and going out of his way, it seemed to me, not to ask too many questions about what our post-slap conversation in the driveway had consisted of. “Good for you,” was all he’d said when I came inside after our confrontation. His voice was serious and low, even though I sensed he’d been delighted by the slap. But Trevor kept his demeanour sombre, as if in respect for what I’d accomplished out there. He’d given my shoulder a big-brotherly pat as I came up the stairs from the foyer.

It was clear that Trevor felt Jessica had been adequately dealt with. And now the priority was mapping out a game plan for our upcoming visit with Eleanor Mallon.

The game plan was to make the place immaculate, one, which was no difficult task considering I’d been keeping it neat as a pin for potential home-buyers all month long. But Trevor thought I should consider hauling some of Irene’s personal touches out from the basement cubby where I’d stored them — her tasselled rugs, her family photographs. A doily or two. Basically he wanted me to reapply my mother’s personality to the freshly blank decor.