I dropped to my knees on the floor beside Trevor then. He gazed at me, surprised and with an air of expectation, as if we were about to sit cross-legged across from one another and play some kind of children’s game.

“Trevor,” I said. “Did you send Finny?”

Trevor stopped smiling and let his head loll back against the carpet. He looked up at the ceiling awhile.

A kind of fog descended in my brain. Just get him up, the fog dictated, get him out of here and go to bed. The fog didn’t want me to dwell on it. The fog was eager for me to get some sleep. The only other thing I was sure of, inside that fog, was that Trevor would never hurt Kelli. He loved my sister, after all. Just as he had loved, however pushily, my mother. His love was what had made it all negotiable, forgivable, for so long. And that was why going to sleep would be ok. This was a dumb, drunken stunt that he had pulled, but a minor irritation in the grand scheme of things. Right now I just had to get him out.

but Trevor wasn’t going anywhere. I’d stood up first, still holding his hand but pulling on it now, saying I would call him a cab. Trevor allowed himself to be yanked to his feet, but as soon as he was up he fell against me, reeling and chortling and forgetting he needed to be quiet. I tried to heave him upright but instead ended up just shifting his weight enough that the momentum carried him back to the couch, onto which he unresistingly flopped.

“Ohh,” said Trevor then, pulling his legs up onto the couch along with the rest of his torso. It was an Ohh of pleasure — drunken Trevor liked the couch, the couch was good, it welcomed him. He would be passed out in moments.

“Trevor,” I whispered helplessly, “don’t you dare throw up on my mother’s carpet.”

“Would’n dream of it,” he slurred. In the dark, I could tell his eyes were closed. They no longer glittered at me.

He snored as I unfolded a tartan throw that Irene had always kept on display over the back of the cushioned armchair and spread it over him. There was nothing to be done about him now. But tomorrow, I resolved, we would have the serious talk I’d intended us to have at Tim Hortons. Trevor would be ashamed of himself, horrified by his behaviour, and I would finally ask him, with total justification, to return the key. Strictly speaking this was breaking and entering — I would tell him that. I still fully intended to get the locks changed, even though I now knew we’d be out of here in a matter of months — maybe even weeks, depending on the keenness of Nate and Jason to move in. Still, demanding the key would be a symbolic gesture, a long-overdue one, to let Trevor know he had stepped irrevo­cably over the line this time.