I shook my head but for some reason my brain whirred as if stalled and I couldn’t think of how to argue with what he was saying. There were a handful of things I could have said, which only occurred to me later. That I was a woman in my mid­-forties, the owner of two homes, holder of two advanced degrees. That I had always been the primary breadwinner in my marriage and had even supported my husband during his two full years of grad school. But I knew if I were to point out any of those facts (other than my age), they’d fall on Trevor’s ears like the made-up tale he had just told me.

The evening dwindled and the three of us sat in companionable silence broken occasionally by the sounds of Kelli whispering and snickering to herself in her contentment. After a while, she started making her toast-and-peanut-­butter noises, indicating, like a vesper, that it was almost time for bed. Trevor heaved himself to his feet and supposed out loud he should be getting along home. I looked up in surprise. It was not that I expected him to just stay over every single night now that he had revealed himself to be my mother’s secret son. But we’d just had a long day together of stewing over Jessica Hendy and panicking over Eleanor Mallon and re-Irene-­ifying the house from top to bottom in preparation for the latter’s visit. And despite the occasional way he had baited and irritated me, Trevor had mostly spent the last twelve hours propping me up. And now he was easing his way out from underneath me, leaving me to stand on my own to face the Adult Protection worker in the morning.

“You don’t want some strange dude hanging around when the social workers come knocking on the door,” Trevor explained, as if once again reading my thoughts. “Every single person they see, they’re gonna have questions about.”

“But you’re a family friend,” I protested. “People are allowed to have family friends.”

“We just wanna give the lady as little to do as possible,” said Trevor. “And get her out the door, back to her office, writing a report saying how everything’s tickety-boo with the Petrie girls.”

I stood up. Everything Trevor was saying was making sense, but I couldn’t stop arguing about it. I wasn’t ready for him to go.

“But isn’t it good for her to see we have friends around? People we can turn to for support? Don’t they want to know we have a community we can access? In case we . . .”

Trevor’s hands landed on my shoulders like two weights. I wobbled briefly under them, and he steadied me.

“You just text me the minute she leaves,” he said. “And I’ll be back.”

26

She was as pleasant and gracious in person as she’d been on the phone and this annoyed the hell out of me at first. I’d woken up that morning primed for enemies, leaping out of bed like Rocky Balboa. I wanted someone to go up against and emerge victorious over. I opened the door to her and imagined Trevor’s brother opening the door to him, except this time the person opening the door would be the one ready with the sucker punch. In my mind I saw Trevor’s arm snap forward, the biceps bunching and contracting. Pow! That’s how I wanted to handle this visit with Eleanor Mallon. Metaphorically speaking, of course. It was not really an appropriate mindset to be going into the situation with, but I couldn’t help myself — I wanted to win this thing, decisively. I wanted to be the fist, snapping forward.