Noel coughed.

“Um,” I said. “What did my mother usually give?”

“It’s a raffle,” repeated Noel patiently. “You could win a house! Tickets are fifty dollars.”

I grabbed my purse off the coatrack, just as I had fantasized about doing moments before. But I don’t want another house, I thought distantly. The house I have is killing me.

Above us, Trevor couldn’t help himself. “Fifty dollars,” he said wonderingly. “Jesus murphy.”

Noel flicked his eyes up to Trevor, his features flattening into hostile neutrality again. “For a house,” he repeated. “To help the hospital.”

I had my wallet in my hand and stood there staring into it. “I don’t have fifty dollars,” I said in what I could hear was a fretful, almost panicked voice. Because I didn’t know how to do this. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. This was an opportunity but I had no idea how to take advantage of it.

Noel turned back to me, his face kind and, for the first time since I’d known him, fatherly. “I can just take your credit card number, dear.”

“Oh boy!” yelped Trevor from above us. “Someone’s on his way to Fiji!” Noel’s face contracted into the pissed-off knot I was familiar with and he jerked it up at Trevor to retort something sharp. But then he noticed something.

“Foot’s bleeding there, buddy.”

I glanced up at Trevor. He’d been leaning against the doorframe, balancing all his weight on his left foot in order to avoid putting any on his right. But now the bottom of his right sock was soaked through with blood — I wondered if he’d got any on Irene’s carpet when he’d been frogmarching Kelli back to her stool. He had to have, I realized. A single bloody footprint stamped haphazardly across the pristine off-white like a bone-headed clue in a cheesy murder mystery.

“Arse,” remarked Trevor, glancing down at his foot.

“We broke a glass,” I explained to Noel.

“Ok,” said Noel, watching with something like contentment as Trevor, wincing, leaned against the fridge and pulled off his sock. “Should get some Polysporin or something on that.”

Trevor was already reaching above the fridge where, he apparently knew, Irene had kept the first aid kit since Kelli and I were kids. His face was twisted in irritation at Noel’s advice — it was clear Noel rubbed Trevor the wrong way every bit as much as Trevor did Noel. They were two snarling alphas, like the dogs who’d had to be scolded and pulled apart on the sidewalk earlier that afternoon.

But before Trevor could snarl a remark at Noel, a pot fell out of the cupboard and hit him in the face — this happened with a combination of speed and surprise that felt surreal to me in the moment. It was only later that I registered this surreal quality was comedy — that is, the pot had comic timing. It even made a sound like bonk! as it bounced off the bridge of Trevor’s nose.