And it had been — I remembered this from the day Trevor hauled it out after our drive out to Barnbarroch Manor, after he’d pulled the cover off the barbecue and I’d been surprised to find it so pristine — it had been about half full on that day. Just a week and half after my mother’s death.

We’d only used it twice since then, after all.

I looked at the expiry date — almost a full year from now. So the massive bottle, now only a third full, had not been purchased forever-ago, like the Worcester sauce and the tomato relish had, left to languish indefinitely in the back of my mother’s fridge.

It had been bought fairly recently. By a woman who at the time would have been inching her way toward death’s door. Bought, and very promptly eaten up.

Arun Gill stood in his still-defiled garage, just arrived home from work. The mess the vandals left had been hastily, partially cleaned up — tools and debris that they’d flung around had since been shoved into neatish piles, to be replaced on shelves and in cupboards later.

The racist graffiti remained. I could see that there were other scrawls in addition to the PAKI GO HOME that Noel had told me about. There was a more formal, policy-minded DEPORT ALL MUSLIMS and, on the opposite wall, almost as an afterthought, F.U. ISIS SCUMBAGS.

I’d been waiting for him, sitting at the window alongside Kelli and gazing at his house. From the street, the sight of the two of us framed in the window like that, side by side, staring vacantly, probably made it look as if she and I had finally synced up in some creepy, sisterly way like the twins in The Shining, become two halves of the same person. But when I saw Mr. Gill pull into his garage, I told Kelli to stay put and hurried across the street.

It was only once I got there, once Mr. Gill got out of his car and saw me lingering in his driveway, that I noticed I was still holding the jumbo bottle of No Name barbecue sauce. I had, I realized, taken a seat at the window beside Kelli with it in my hands after I’d finished replacing all the other condiments in the fridge.

I gestured with it by way of greeting. “Hi.”

He invited me in but I explained Kelli was alone in the house and I felt I should stay where I could keep an eye on her in her window and she could keep an eye on me. We both turned and waved at her, and Kelli’s rocking become a little more pronounced. Kelli had been not exactly alarmed but certainly curious when I’d told her I was going across the street. Now she likely was getting a kick out of seeing me on the other side of the window, experiencing it as a performance put on for her benefit.

“So,” I said, not sure where to begin. “Really sorry about the break-in yesterday.”