But soon we would leave that behind. A fantasy I’d been only half-conscious of in the past few days blossomed full-blown in my mind as I sat there on the phone with Margot. Kelli and I in a sleek, bright condo on the fashionable side of the bridge, maybe overlooking the harbour, but still within walking distance of Gorsebrook. We would walk there together in the mornings; there’d be no more driving just to get to the grocery store or buy a cup of coffee, no more negotiating four lanes of traffic just to get across the street to the stupid Starbucks. We’d find somewhere leafy, with amenities and parks and small, local shops and friendly, waving neighbours. We’d go for strolls. Kelli’s bad knee would get the exercise she could never get enough of here, especially with an aging, cancer-ridden mother unable to take her anywhere, not even in a car at the end.

Would we even require home care in this new life? Not for walks, clearly. Kelli would be getting all the exercise she needed once we established ourselves in our new neighbourhood. And what about baths? Surely I could handle baths! My mother had managed them herself for years, right up until the cancer kept her from being able to stand for long stretches of time. I, on the other hand, was perfectly healthy. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before that I could handle baths? It struck me all at once that the standard of care Kelli was receiving, the daily comings and goings of the workers, had been tailored to assist a woman who’d been old, sick, and growing weaker every day.

All these thoughts went through my head, it seemed, during an intake of breath — not even a particularly long or measured one. And that was when I told Margot I wanted to cut back. I said we would only need someone to come by twice a week, for Kelli’s baths. And that I would like to assist with those baths, to learn the ropes as it were. And after a couple more weeks, perhaps we’d cut it back again.

“So no more walks?” asked Margot lightly.

“I think I can manage the walks,” I assured her.

“Whatever you need, dear,” she murmured, and Margot’s voice faded out briefly, as if she had tilted her head away from the phone. Even more distantly, I could hear the sound of a pen-tip dragging itself in a long, deliberate line across a page.

13

Kelli’s random bout of diarrhea didn’t return, didn’t turn out to be a bellwether for some subsequent, more serious ailment, to my relief. But just to be on the safe side, I was extra-careful about her diet in the following days, plying her with yogurt and probiotics and turning the kitchen into an assembly line of various muffins and cakes held together with nothing but psyllium husks and flax — my mother, I recalled, had always sworn by both, and it was easier to get Kelli to eat a muffin than swallow a pill.