“Trebie leave,” said Kelli again. I felt a cautious thrill. I wanted to pump my fist — Way to go, Kelli! Tell him! But Trevor’s expression didn’t change. If anything, it became more beatific.

“I do,” Trevor avowed. And then I knew — I knew before he even said it. My sense of panic thickened into something more dismal — a certainty.

He broke Kelli’s rules then, clasping both her hands in his. “I do believe,” he said.

Kelli reared away from his grip but Trevor didn’t notice. He’d already turned, beaming, to extend a hand toward me.

Acknowledgements

In November of 2016 I did a residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point on Toronto Island. It was a hell of a November in a lot of ways, but the weather that month was stunning and I spent a lot of time just gaping stupefied at the clear, vivid sky. I came back from that residency feeling wrecked and depressed and like I had accomplished precisely nothing, but it was probably some of the most important writing I did for the book, so thank you to Artscape.

Thank you also to the people who spoke with me about caregiving and social services of various stripes, including Mark MacLean and Christy Ann Conlin.

Thanks to Christy Fletcher and Sarah Fuentes for their encouragement and essential early feedback. Anita Badami was an invaluable first reader. My editor, Melanie Little, is made of solid gold as far as I’m concerned. I’m forever grateful to Sarah MacLachlan for her steadfast enthusiasm and support of the things I write.

Love and thanks to Rob Appleford for being there throughout.

The caregivers in my life who I’d specifically like to single out for thanks: Phyllis, James, and Clint Coady.

LYNN COADY is the critically acclaimed and award-­winning author of six books, including Hellgoing, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was an Amazon.ca and a Globe and Mail Best Book. She is also the author of The Antagonist, winner of the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel, Strange Heaven, published when she was just twenty-eight, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her books have been published in the U.K., U.S., Holland, France, and Germany. Coady lives in Toronto and writes for television.

Twitter: @Lynn_Coady

House Of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 by writers Dennis Lee and David Godfrey. Anansi started as a small press with a mandate to publish Canadian writers, and quickly gained attention for publishing authors such as Margaret Atwood, Matt Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, and Erín Moure, as well as George Grant and Northrop Frye. French-Canadian works in translation have always been an important part of the list, and prominent Anansi authors in translation include Roch Carrier, Marie-Claire Blais, Anne Hébert, and France Daigle. Today, the company specializes in finding and developing writers of literary fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction, including Katherena Vermette, Lisa Moore, Patrick deWitt, Tanya Talaga, Djamila Ibrahim, Kathleen Winter, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and in maintaining the culturally significant backlist that has accumulated in the decades since the house was founded.