“No, no,” said Noel, “I didn’t see that if he did. Just irritates me, seeing him back here. Your poor mother.”

“Why my poor mother?”

“The way he was always hanging off her. Never giving her a moment’s peace. I think she made the mistake of slipping him a few extra dollars one time and after that he never left her alone.”

I had a sudden feeling like the surrounding houses of my mother’s neighbourhood constituted magic portals of a sort, the door to each leading to an alternate reality. Mr. Gill’s door led you into the reality where Trevor and Irene were a blissful, bonded, mutually appointed mother and son. But now I had just peeked beyond Noel’s door to the world as he saw it. And Noel’s take was something altogether different. As Noel kept talking, face pinkening, winding himself up again, I got the feeling he’d been wanting to vent on this subject a while now.

“Walking her to the goddamn car, walking her into the house,” said Noel. “Never letting anyone say a word to her . . .”

“He wouldn’t let you talk to her?”

“Acted like a goddamn prison guard,” complained Noel. “I got my snow blower out last winter after the first big dump, I do everyone’s driveways. Your mom comes running out of the house, Oh, no, Noel, you better not. He won’t like it. He won’t like it, I say. What won’t he like about me taking five minutes to clear out your goddamn driveway? He likes to do it himself, she says. Jesus Christ, I tell her, whose driveway is it, yours or his?”

“Did she ever,” I said, glancing down the street toward Mr. Gill’s house, “talk about Trevor to you? Like, did she tell you who he was?”

“I knew he helped looking after your sister,” said Noel. “I saw them out for a walk the first time he started coming over — had no idea who he was, and let me tell you, I was out the door like a shot. Thought she was being kidnapped.”

I smiled at the thought of this. Imagine Trevor’s reaction to this high-voiced old man stumping over to him from across the street, demanding to know what he thought he was doing with my sister. Noel, it struck me now, was the quintessential nosey neighbour. He had the real scoop on Trevor because he’d demanded it from the moment he clapped eyes on this invader. Mr. Gill, on the other hand, had been newer to the neighbourhood, and clearly more of a minder-of-his-own-­business. Unlike Noel, he’d never asked to know who Trevor was to my mother — he had, at some point, been told. And told a lie. And I had just assumed the person doing the telling was Irene.