Trevor reached over and, with just two fingers, flipped her plate over and onto the floor.

“How about that?” said Trevor.

Did he think this would quiet Kelli down? At the sight of her supper flung across the linoleum, my sister started hollering again, outraged in earnest. Trevor watched her rail for a blank-faced moment. He’d never encountered this level of defiance before.

“Leave the table,” he roared, slamming his palm down, sending the dishes and cutlery jumping.

But Kelli just roared back at him. A rapid-fire stream of nos and Trebies and Kelli’s suppers. She was not remotely intimidated by the red-faced, table-slamming man beside her. When Trevor realized this, he turned to me.

“Get her the fuck out of here.”

“Kelli,” I said. “Let’s go sit.”

“No Karie no Karie no K—”

“I’ll bring you a nice snack in your chair,” I promised.

Grumbling, she shoved back her chair and lumbered to her feet. She kept saying Trevor’s name — Trebie — over and over again, drained of all affection, spitting out the two syllables the way Jessica had that time we fought in the driveway. Trevor watched as Kelli blundered out of the kitchen. His red face faded to pink and his fury was fading into something I had to look away from — the last thing I wanted to feel toward Trevor was pity.

“She never acted this way when your mother was around,” he told me.

“Fair enough,” I said after a moment.

“Fair enough? That’s all you gotta say?”

“Things have been a lot different since then,” I said. “It’s going to affect her.”

“It was up to you to keep things on an even keel,” said Trevor. He got up and went to the counter to top up his rum. “Sure as fuck screwed the pooch on that one, though, eh?”

The smart thing to do, and I knew how to do it now, was soothe and appease. All I had to say was that Trevor was right. That I had gone about things all wrong. I had gone about things all wrong because I had not had Trevor to tell me what was right — or I had, but I had not appreciated him, had not listened to him. But now, thank goodness, he was here, and everything would be ok. But something about Kelli’s outburst — how it had wounded him — made me want to rebel. Of course, it was dangerous to wound him like that. Kelli could get away with what I couldn’t. But it had been so invigorating to witness! In a long, endless afternoon dominated by a terror so low-key it was downright monotonous, Kelli’s dinner table fuck-you to Trevor had given me a thrill of goosebumps.

So I talked back.

“Hard to keep things on an even keel,” I said. “With you constantly trying to scare the shit out of us.”

“Don’t start in about that bullshit with the water jug again,” said Trevor. “I apologized for that. I gave you a goddamn written apology.”