Mr. Gill glanced over at the driveway as Trevor backed his truck in. “It must have been a comfort to you, though,” he reflected, nodding at the truck.

“Yes,” I replied to be agreeable. Then I realized I didn’t understand. “Sorry,” I said. “What was a comfort?”

“To have your brother here,” said Mr. Gill.

17

Downstairs, footsteps and voices now echoed, because there was no more furniture to absorb these noises. Only Kelli’s throne-like chair remained, sitting nobly and alone like a banished emperor.

I had yet to figure out what I would do with the upstairs furniture. It was nice, and my mother had kept it pristine, but it was not our style, Kelli’s and mine. The idea of stuffing my mother’s unfashionable, many-times-reupholstered chairs into a condo — the type of insolently sleek, modern condo I had in mind for us anyway — depressed me. But it seemed extravagant to buy everything new — especially for a woman who was currently between jobs.

I was sweeping up dust bunnies in the basement, muttering about all this, listening to my own voice and the dry rasp of the broom echoing in the empty corners as Jessica stood nearby, looking around, with her hands on her hips. She was getting ready to go. Martin had received his cut of the yard sale takings and was counting it obsessively upstairs as Kelli pelted him with repeated questions about what grade he was in and if he liked school and how old he was. I could hear Martin answering dutifully. Kids, I found, adapted to Kelli’s patterns more easily than adults. Martin had intuited that the pleasure of conversation for Kelli wasn’t in the details, it was in the repetition. Martin, I could hear, had made it a bit of an absent-minded game, started leavening the tedium of the conversation by sing-songing his replies, which I had no doubt made Kelli love him all the more.

Grade-six, grade-six, gradey-gradey grade-six, Martin was singing above my head.

Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh, went Kelli. Then: What grade you in?

“So I don’t know,” I was saying to Jessica but mostly to myself, still muttering stream-of-consciousness about the furniture. “I guess it depends on the condo. How big it is, the style. Maybe if I reupholster everything it won’t bother me so much, but, god, if I’m going to pay for that maybe it does make sense to just start fresh with a whole new slew . . .”

“Ok, so you will get the key back from that guy,” interrupted Jessica.

I stopped sweeping and looked up at her. This was a conversation I thought we’d already finished.

“I just want to make sure,” she said. “You will get the key back from the kidnapping guy.”

Jessica thought I was crazy and she’d spent the remainder of the afternoon, once Trevor had blustered off with the TV, making that known. I’d let it slip about the key not long after he left, flopping down into the Muskoka chair beside her and chuckling about his abrupt, almost pissed-off departure with perhaps the most expensive item in the house. I explained, in response to Jessica’s incredulous look, how it had broken my heart to hear Trevor talk about my mother and everything he’d done for her — and her for him. I’d needed to give him something for his trouble. And besides, I added, smirking, I’d just found out the guy was my brother.