I looked up at Jessica. “That’s the guy from the fucking parking lot,” she said.

I wasn’t sure. I had been sure a moment ago, when I had that flash of recognition, but now, scrutinizing pixelated Stephen Finn, I wasn’t sure.

“It’s him,” said Jessica.

I squinted at her tablet’s screen. Stephen Finn had the dad-bod of the parking lot screamer, yes, and the goatee grown to cover a babyish pair of cheeks, but his expression in the photo was slack and vague whereas the face of the man in the parking lot had been taut and pulsating. It was hard to compare the two.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It’s him,” said Jessica. “Do you realize what that means?”

I looked up at her. She could see I realized what that meant, but she said it anyway.

“Trevor is friends with the guy from the parking lot.”

I flashed on what Noel said. How Trevor never gave my mother a moment’s peace.

“Please tell me,” said Jessica, “he hasn’t been coming around anymore.”

I thought about the note on the door. I AM HERE NO MATTER WHAT.

“He’s not,” I assured her. “We had a parting of ways.”

“But you’ve said that before,” said Jessica.

This surprised me. “I did?”

“At the yard sale. You said we kind of said goodbye after you gave him the TV. And the next thing I know he’s alone in the house with Kelli and you’re slapping me in the face in your driveway.”

I winced. There it was at last, plopped down onto the table between us. “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what was going on with me.” Of course, I did know what had been going on with me — I knew precisely. I remembered Trevor’s shoulder-y silhouette looming behind Kelli in the window on the day I slapped Jessica. I had turned to glance at the house and there they were, Kelli and her protective shadow. I’d spent the previous half hour in a cold panic about Eleanor Mallon and, in spite of everything that happened afterwards, I couldn’t deny the feeling that silhouette had given me in the moment. That things would be handled and we were not alone.

“Anyway,” I went on, “we kind of had a fight the other night. He started acting like a tool and I told him to get out.”

Jessica went still and looked at me. “What did he do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just started acting snotty. He gets mad when anyone disagrees with him.”

“What did he do?” she asked again.

“Nothing,” I said again. “He left.”

Jessica frowned. “I had a friend,” she blurted. Then she stopped. “Ok, actually, no. This is a story my psychiatrist told me about one of his patients. This woman kept getting into accidents. She was in her seventies, a grandma. And all her life she’d been accident-prone. She tripped coming down the stairs and twisted her ankle. She knocked her head with the cupboard doors practically every other day, so that her husband duct-taped sponges all along the edges. She broke glassware in the dishpan and cut her hands to shreds, that kind of thing. Her kids thought she shouldn’t drive, but she was a perfect driver — never had a ticket in her life. Anyway, one of her daughters finally noticed that this was happening whenever her mother got upset about something, whenever there was upheaval. For example, when one of her kids announced out of the blue that he was getting married, she got up from the table, tripped over the open dishwasher door, and went sprawling. Sprained her wrist.”