There were appearances in the parking lot of Gorsebrook and outside our condo — I made a point of getting a place with a twenty-four-hour security guard who had to buzz people up. And broken windows at Gorsebrook sometimes — he hated Gorsebrook because it soon became our second home, like family, and he only ever wanted us to have one family. He accused Gorsebrook of all sorts of things, referred to Marlene sometimes as “the brainwasher-in-chief.” Spray paint across the door one morning — SEX ABUSERS WORK HERE. A happy face in the O. He showed up at Jessica Hendy’s house too. And once at Martin Hendy’s school. Jessica also endured her share of pleading Facebook messages. She also took out more than one restraining order. There were more court appearances. Fines. Brief jail time. Honestly? It went on and on — world without end. When it finally stopped I knew it was because he’d found another. Someone who needed what he had to give. So, really, it didn’t stop at all.

The screen door wheezed shut and I watched Noel hot-foot it across the street as fast as his bad hip or knee would allow. Once he reached his front door, I called up to Trevor to tell him what I’d said — what Noel now understood about our situation. And so the bubble was punctured and Trevor knew it. He looked down at me from the kitchen doorway, one hand clapped over his nose, blinking away tears of pain, bare foot bleeding.

After a moment he said from beneath his hand, “Fine. If you’re gonna be like that.”

“So you should get out of here now,” I said loudly, thinking he didn’t understand.

“Fuck, ok,” said Trevor. He hobbled into the living room, favouring his good foot. I bolted up the stairs. He was going for Kelli.

When I got there he was kneeling in front of her for the second time that day. Kelli looked alert and troubled.

“Trevor,” I said, “you’re bleeding all over the fucking carpet.” I glanced up at the window, and through the cracks in the curtains I could see that the main floor of Noel’s house was blazing with light — as if in a single gesture he’d turned on every lamp he owned the moment he crossed the threshold.

Trevor was whispering to Kelli now, in the same prayer-like way she often whispered to herself. I made out “Beaner” a couple of times. He wasn’t looking at her but at his own hands, which were clasped in her lap. I had a feeling he would have liked to have been holding her hands, but had stopped himself from taking them in his. Trevor, it struck me, was showing Kelli a little respect for a change. That is to say, he was respecting her aversion to eye contact, to physical manhandling. Yes, he had clasped his hands against her knees, but he hadn’t grabbed her, he wasn’t plowing through her boundaries like he usually did — I thought about the first day I ever laid eyes on Trevor, being amazed and discomfited when he demonstrated how he’d trained my eternally hug-avoidant sister to embrace him. But now he was getting as close to Kelli as he could, communing with her, without violating any of her personal taboos.