In one motion, Trevor stood, placed both hands against the table, and shoved it away from him. A couple of plates jerked forward and landed on the floor. A glass toppled over and rolled, almost lazily, over the edge. It was one of my mother’s shatter-proof glasses from the seventies. True to the brand, it didn’t shatter when it landed. But it did when Trevor kicked it across the room and into the wall. It shattered utterly, disintegrating, like a windshield — too many pieces to count. I would be sweeping them up for the rest of my life.

“I just want to have my supper,” said Trevor, and sat back down.

As I was cleaning up, he poured us both a conciliatory rum. This was Trevor’s pattern, I was starting to understand. First, he tensed, and the tension would build — and it was up to you to intuit that tension early, to defuse it by any means possible, with some kind of appeasement or distraction. If you didn’t succeed, what came next was always your fault: Trevor would explode, shutting down all possible dissent or insubordination with acts of noisiness and violence — violence that always implied there could be more and greater violence to come. And finally, once you, his tormentor, were completely cowed, the way he liked you, he made nice. He forgave and forgot, expecting you to do the same. The roller coaster ride was over for now, but soon it would begin again.

He didn’t want me to be mad at him, he said. He understood I’d been upset about my mom. That I was still upset. He let me clear away the dishes on my own as he spoke. The rum was making him loquacious, philosophical. Guilt, Trevor told me, was a hell of a thing. Literally, it could be hell. “When you feel like you haven’t done your job by someone? That you’ve let them down? Fuck me if that isn’t the worst feeling in the world. I’ve been there, Karie, Christ knows. I’m not one to judge.”

I swept up the shattered glass and emptied it, tinkling, into the garbage.

“Leanne. My brother. I know I made my brother out to be an asshole — oh, and he is by the way, a gaping asshole — but, you know . . . he’s younger than me and I should be looking out for him. I know I need to be the bigger man. I need to reach out, apologize for poppin him that time. But I just don’t have it in me yet — I can’t put aside my anger. I’m not there. And that was your problem too, Karie. You waited too long with your mum. And now you’re beatin yourself up for it. But there’s no point to that anymore. It doesn’t get you anywhere — it just has you going around in circles, making dumb decisions that end up hurting everybody.”

I began rinsing the excess grease off the dishes and loading them into the dishwasher.