These thoughts went through my head in a microsecond and I was peering into the darkened living room before I had even finished thinking them — knowing what I was looking for, and seeing it. I didn’t feel dread, just comprehension, an almost satisfying feeling like when you’re trying to figure out how to assemble something, a confounding piece of Ikea furniture say, and in a moment of inspiration you maneuver Incomprehensible Fragment A into Mystifying Chamber B and everything snaps into place. That sense of: I get it. The mellow streetlights glowed beyond the windows and Mr. Gill’s new LED spotlight glared from his garage across the street, and together they cast a somehow stark yet buttery glow around the room, so that the furniture was slightly haloed, outlined as shadowy but recognizable lumps. Along with the shadowy, recognizable lump slouched in the centre of the couch. Just as I made him out, he took another sip.

I turned and cajoled Kelli into bed, whispering reassurances about bad guys — because she wasn’t finished talking about them, not by a longshot. I assured my sister that the bad guys were in bed, so she should be, but maybe they’d be out in the morning and she could watch them from her perch by the window before heading out to see her friends. After a few further, whispered inquires, Kelli finally said good night, slumped back into bed, and allowed me to pull her bedroom door almost completely shut. I knew she wouldn’t go to sleep, not right away. But she would lie there, whispering excitedly to herself for a while, and those whispers would fill her ears, I hoped, drowning out whatever might be going on down the hall from her room.

I went to my bedroom, pulled on a robe, and grabbed a box of Kleenex.

I didn’t turn on any lights. I took a seat in the cushioned armchair — its old springs whimpering as I settled my weight into it — and placed the Kleenex on the coffee table without speaking. I flashed on a memory of a therapist I used to see when I was going through my divorce. She’d had this way of wordlessly placing a box of tissues in front of me every time I started to snivel that I’d found, for no good reason, infuriating. She never rolled her eyes, exactly, but I somehow read contempt in the way she thumped the Kleenex down.

But Trevor didn’t seem to read anything into it. He was beyond that, maybe. He just jerked forward and yanked a fistful of tissue from the box, which he jammed against his running eyes and nose.

“Ah, fuck,” he gasped. He leaned into the wad of tissue a long moment. His shoulders bounced and he made laboured heaving noises. He couldn’t even talk.