Now we were just standing across from one another. For something to do, I turned away from him again and flicked on the dishwasher. I had just finished loading it when Trevor and Mike arrived. On some level, I expected the electric hum to be reassuring, but just underneath the hum there was a steady grinding noise that made me tense.

“Listen,” said Trevor. “I have a buddy who sells real estate. You wanna look at condos sometime, he can get you a good deal. I’ll let him know you’re a friend.”

“Oh — thanks!” I said. “I’ll keep it in mind. My friend Jessica said she’d help me out — she’s a real estate agent too.”

Trevor nodded, but it was an indulgent, parental kind of nod, the kind of nod you give when you’re waiting for someone to stop talking nonsense. “You’re gonna want someone you can trust.”

I tried to remember exactly what I had told Trevor about Jessica, the day I called to ask if he would babysit Kelli. Had I mentioned our out-of-the-blue Facebook reconnection after thirty plus years? Our mutual girlhood obsession with one another? Who knew what I might’ve told him in passing. I might’ve even — and I hoped I hadn’t but I might’ve — touched upon Jessica’s abusive past. She just got in touch one day — her therapist suggested it, believe it or not. She had a pretty awful childhood, apparently . . . Jessica had still seemed like an imaginary figure to me at that point — a dream I might have had — and it hadn’t seemed to matter what I told Trevor about her, any more than if I’d told him the plot of a movie I’d recently seen.

“No — totally,” I said now, nodding. This was unintelligible — it felt like I was trying to give him every possible answer in just a few words and gestures — yes, no, absolutely, never. “Jessica’s great. I trust her. But thanks.”

Trevor stopped nodding and frowned. Being indulgent and parental was not having the desired effect. He lowered his head to look me in the eye. “I mean, does she even know the neighbourhoods? Because I know the neighbourhoods. I lived here my whole life.”

Trevor’s fists, which had relaxed briefly in his pockets, now bunched themselves up again and I could see the outlines of his knuckles pushing against the fabric of his jeans. The dishwasher kept grinding away in the background.

“I’m sure she knows the neighbourhoods,” I said. I made a jerky shrug-like gesture — an easygoing pantomime to let Trevor know how confident and in control of my life I was.

“Ok,” said Trevor. “But what I’m telling you, Miss Karie, is, you don’t know this town as well as you used to. You don’t know the people here. You don’t know the people coming and going in your house, for that matter. In your bathroom downstairs.”

He bobbed his head significantly, indicating the floor beneath us with his chin.