“Apples?”

“Nothing raw.”

“Bananas?”

“Nope.”

“You never have, like, a raw carrot? Or berries?”

“S’gotta be cooked.”

“Lettuce?

“S’gotta be cooked.”

“You cook lettuce?”

“I don’t eat lettuce,” said Trevor, patiently, as if he’d had this conversation with many a dumbfounded woman before me.

“So no salad?”

“No salad.”

“What’ll we have on the side?”

“Baked potato,” said Trevor. It turned out he had purchased three, already wrapped in foil.

Trevor had also bought a fresh propane tank and after only a few minutes of masculine fiddling he had the ancient barbecue up and running. I noticed he didn’t bother to clean the grill, or ask me to do so, but at the same time there was no question my mother would have allowed the barbecue to be covered up those near-thirty years ago without ensuring the grill was spotless. My mother’s standard of cleanliness was such that I could well imagine it enduring over decades. And if there were cobwebs, I thought listlessly, they’d burn up in the fire.

Kelli had claimed her perch by the window as soon as we got home, so Trevor and I were alone on the back patio, chatting about Gorsebrook, based on the brief look-around we took before I started to feel nervous about Kelli and insisted we go back to the truck. I’d been too anxious to really absorb much, but what I saw looked hopeful. The interior was clean, cheerful, and as sunlit as I’d predicted when I noticed the big windows outside. Because it was smaller, it seemed that Gorsebrook, unlike Seaside, didn’t admit the more profoundly disabled, so the residents were all basically at Kelli’s level — people she could talk to, play games with maybe. There were no wheelchairs parked in the hallways, and the beds, I noticed, were just regular beds — not hospital issue. There was a common room with shelves haphazardly piled with board games and various musical instruments. It also had a Ping-Pong table, a pair of massive couches, and a TV for movie nights. Across the hall, the dining area had dollar-store vases with flowers on every table and its walls were lined with splashily painted artwork courtesy of, I gathered, the residents.

The workers had seemed cheerful for the most part and so had the residents — except for a girl who’d been hurrying down the hall in an open bathrobe, the sleeve of which got hooked on a railing and yanked her backward, causing her to yell Bastard! which cracked Trevor up. Driving home, Trevor joked that it seemed like his kind of place. “But seriously,” he said now. “It seemed nice. If you want to book a more official visit with them some time, let me know.”

I wondered why he thought I should let him know. Trevor hadn’t mentioned that he had any kind of “in” at Gorsebrook, the way he had at Barnbarroch, some insider “buddy” who could speed the process or put in a good word for us. I let it slide, because Trevor was talking about other things now. He stood at the barbecue and I sat in a plastic chair, watching the tendons in his forearms flex and contract as he manipulated the sizzling meat. He told me a little about his life. There was an ex-wife and a young son, who he saw only every other weekend, which broke his damn heart every day. And his wife was going to let the kid play soccer and not hockey, he said, even though Trevor had vowed to pay for all the equipment himself. “But will she listen to reason?” Trevor asked me. “No,” he answered for me. “It’s just: concussion, concussion, concussion. That’s her only argument.”