What I wasn’t expecting was for Trevor to show up again the very next day, this time accompanied by an eight-year-old boy. It was not one of his home care days. On this day, Kelli was booked for a bath, so we had been expecting a short, pillowy thirty-something woman named Brenna, who always smelled like a perfect 50/50 combination of spearmint and tobacco, to arrive at any minute. I headed to the foyer when I heard the rap at the screen door, ready to usher Brenna across the threshold, but then I heard the metallic wheeze of the screen door opening and when I got there Trevor had already stepped inside with the boy.

He was small for his age and seemed introverted. He wasn’t gazing around at this new environment, the way you’d expect a curious child might. He looked down at the rubber mat, where Kelli and I kept our shoes.

“I brought you girls a visitor!” said Trevor.

“Hey there,” I said. The kid flinched and didn’t look up.

“Introduce yourself, bud,” said Trevor to the kid.

“Mike,” said the kid.

“Hey, Mikey,” I said.

“Not Mikey,” said Trevor. “He was named so there wouldn’t be any of that nickname crap. You know, Bobb-y, Tedd-y, Kenn-y. None of that shit. Just plain Mike. Right, Mike?”

Mike didn’t answer.

“This your little boy?” I asked, even though it was obvious.

“The fruit of my loins,” affirmed Trevor. I blinked at him and wondered where a guy like Mr. No-nickname-crap had come across such a florid phrase. “Thought you and Beaner’d like to see the little dude. We’ll all have tea and celebrate your big news!”

So that’s what this visit was meant to be — a kind of sprinkling of confetti in honour of my decision to move home. He had brought his child over as a celebratory gesture, as if Mike were a cake or a bunch of balloons.

“He looks like you,” I said, even though he did not at all. The kid was dark-haired beneath his Penguins ball cap, with a heartbreaking pair of brown eyes.

Trevor slipped off his shoes and bent down to help Mike do the same.

“I don’t wanna take off my shoes,” protested Mike.

“Well, you wanna go upstairs and meet my two best girls, maybe have a couple of cookies” — Trevor winked at me — “that’s what’s gotta happen!”

Mike relented just as Kelli appeared beside me at the top of the stairs. She loved children and when she heard the squeaking voice in the foyer, she hadn’t been able to wait for Mike to come to her. Meanwhile, the momentum the idea of cookies had seemed to spark in Mike came to a halt when he spotted Kelli.

It was always interesting to me how children responded to my sister. They saw immediately that something was different with her, but they were usually more fascinated than scared. When I was eleven, my mother substitute-taught my Wednesday-morning religion class for a few weeks (all my classmates had adored her, of course, and complained when depressive and shiny-faced Sister Claire returned after her hysterectomy). But my mother had been a volunteer who knew nothing about teaching and so she usually just spent the hour presiding over vague theological discussions on issues like what it meant to be a good Samaritan or why Jesus was mean to his mother and told her to go away that time. One day, at loose ends for a lesson plan and because the babysitter got hung up, my mother decided she would bring Kelli in to class. It would be a class about Kelli! I begged her not to, but she insisted this was a great idea. It would teach my classmates about “unusual people.” So the kids all pulled up their chairs around my sister like she was the winning display at a science fair and Kelli sat rocking and sneaking shy, smiling glances at everyone from beneath her bangs. Even as a child herself she’d loved children.