“Comin back,” said Kelli.

“Karie,” he said. That was it. No deep cuts from the Karie-catalogue this time, no Karie-me-home or Karie-that-weight. Maybe he’d run out. He answered the phone with a solemn, formal air, like a funeral director.

“Hey, Trevor,” I said. “Can we talk?”

“You’re goddamn right we can talk,” he rejoined, warming up bit. “You get my note?”

“I did,” I said.

“You want me to come by? I can come by tonight. I’ll pick up a —”

“Tomorrow,” I told him. “How about the Tim Hortons at the bottom of the hill from us? The one I take Kelli to all the time.”

“Well, well, well, an afternoon out, eh?” He was thrown by this, but tried to sound jovial, as if my insistence on neutral territory in a public setting meant nothing, was simply a novel treat, like when we all decided to go for fish and chips.

“One thirty or so?”

“Sounds good,” said Trevor. “Bringin ol’ Beaner along?”

“No,” I said. Kelli would be at Gorsebrook. I experienced a brief compulsion to explain this to Trevor, which I quashed. I could feel his confusion practically humming through the ether and it gave me satisfaction.

“Ok then,” he said. “Good-good.”

“I’ll see you then,” I said. And hung up first.

What was I planning on doing, exactly? People always stop me, when I get to this part of the story, to ask that question, because I can never quite articulate what it is I had in mind. I was just mad, is what I usually tell them. I remember feeling deceived. Wanting to know the truth. But I know I also wanted to tell Trevor a thing or two. Maybe I wanted to tell him how great things were going with Gorsebrook. How much Kelli loved it. Oh, and that the house had sold. That we’d be moving. That everything was going to change. Then maybe innocently mention how my good friend Jessica Hendy and I — we were friends again, by the way — had discovered the identity of the man who shouted abuse at Kelli in the parking lot, and we’d be passing that information on to the cops. Oh, and, by the way, Irene never wanted you.

And if Trevor got angry at any of that, if he started looking around the Tim Hortons for a water jug to brandish at me, that’s when I would ask: Is that what you did to my mother? Did you fling dishes onto the floor, weigh the jug in your hands at a sick old lady who just wanted you out of her house? Did you berate her for letting other people clear her driveway? Did you say you were her son to make those people go away?

I couldn’t have articulated those thoughts at the time. My pulse was going too fast, pounding in my temples, as I waited for him to pick up. All my thoughts and impulses just sloshed around in a kind of undifferentiated stew. If you’d asked me back then what I planned to do when I saw Trevor the next day, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Just like I can’t tell you now what I did end up doing. Because the meeting never took place.