After she passed, the schedule just kept right on rolling.

There’d been the five-on-the dot arrival of the cheerful, silver-haired couple from Meals on Wheels — not just every week, as I assumed when I saw the notation in Kelli’s World!, but every night. In the days leading up to the funeral, the “Wheelies” (as the couple very much enjoyed referring to themselves) had saved my life with their standing order of two blandly fragrant trays — one for Kelli and one for Irene — the second of which, because it was put in front of me, it occurred to me that I should eat. But after the wake, Irene’s refrigerator had been bursting with casseroles and the leftovers of casseroles. We were good for food, and the relentless cheer of the Wheelies, as much as Kelli thrilled to their arrival every evening, was becoming something I had to gird myself against. So pretty soon I cancelled the Wheelies too. I figured I could handle the evening meals well enough until I figured out what I was going to do with Kelli.

Big Bean! Howdoya do, whaddya say, whaddya know?

The man sounded louder now, more inside than out. I stood up, feeling annoyed with myself because the voice had startled me so badly. You’d think I would be used to the constant intrusions by now — the flurry of hot and cold running caregivers my mother had put in place once she received her ultimate diagnosis. Kelli’s bathers, for example. My mother had used to bathe Kelli herself, but it must’ve become too much for her at some point, because now she had bathers turning up every other day, at all hours, sometimes rapping on the door first thing in the morning, calling to my sister through the screen, was she ready for a nice shampoo? To be fair, the first morning this occurred also happened to be the first day the sun had risen without our mother in the world, so there hadn’t been much sleep the night before. I should have been ready for it, the tap-tap-tap at the door, but Kelli’s World! had been reading like hieroglyphics to me around then and the banging noise had brought me lurching from the bathroom wild-eyed, as if about to face a firing squad, toothbrush poking from the corner of my mouth like a final cigarette.

But once I understood these invasions had my mother’s stamp — had been scheduled and approved by Irene herself — it was hard to feel aggrieved.

It was also hard to feel aggrieved at the sight of Kelli, always overjoyed at the arrival of her bathers, rocking and smiling, repeating their names so happily and incessantly you can bet I learned them pretty quick myself. So far there’d been Ruby. Gisele. Brenna.

But now it was —

TrebieTrebieTrebie. That’s Trebie. Kelli knows Trebie. Followed by a stream of giggles — her distinctive heh-heh-heh that properly belonged to a villain from a Scooby-Doo cartoon.