“Karie-me-back-to-old-Virginny!” he exclaimed the moment he picked up his phone.

I’d had a little script in my head that I was poised to begin reciting after we’d exchanged hellos, but his greeting threw me off so much I burst out laughing.

“That’s a — that’s a deep cut!” I told him.

“Yeah, I’m pretty proud of that one,” said Trevor.

After that, the conversation was easy. We caught up like old friends. Could it be, I asked myself at one point, I actually missed Trevor? This point came when I was telling him about the catastrophe at Gorsebrook. His reaction was completely opposed to the one I’d got from Jessica — and I realized that Trevor’s brand of reassurance was the kind that I’d been craving all along.

“What kinda fuckwit operation are they running over there?” yelled Trevor. “Pardon my French!”

“Right?” I knew, intellectually, that Jessica’s advice to reserve judgment about Gorsebrook was level-headed and logical. But at this particular moment, it felt good to finally have my panic validated, to hear someone be appalled on my and Kelli’s behalf. I needed to be reassured that what had happened at Gorsebrook was outrageous and I had every right to feel as freaked out as I did.

“Jesus Christ — these people gotta get their shit together!” Trevor bellowed.

“Well, I’m really hoping this isn’t the norm.”

“If it is, better to find out now than a couple of months after you got the Beaner settled in there.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“I can talk to —” Trevor began, but then he stopped himself. “You need any help looking around for other options, you just let me know, Miss Karie.”

“So, Trevor,” I said. “Kelli and I were thinking we might fire up the barbecue tonight.”

Trevor insisted he could pick up the steaks, but I told him no — the steaks were bought. In that case, he said, he’d do the grilling, and again I told him no. He would do nothing. He would be, I said, a hundred percent our guest for a change. I could sense Trevor mentally fidgeting on the other end of the line, tormented at the idea of simply sitting back and being waited on, and I was ready for a fight. But after a moment of silent struggle Trevor told me, simply, thank you, that dinner sounded great and he would be there “with rings on my fingers and bells on my toes.”

“I look forward to that,” I said.

“Oh, I got all kindsa tricks up my sleeve,” said Trevor.

21

He arrived with a twelve-pack of beer and — this was new — a forty of Captain Morgan rum paired with a large bottle of diet cola. The combination reminded me of drinking in high school, buying pop at some fast food place, then two or three of us ducking into the women’s bathroom to pour half of it down the sink to be replaced with whatever happened to be in the mickey one of us had hidden in her parka. I was pretty sure I hadn’t touched rum — or at least not rum and coke — since puking myself inside out behind the vice-principal’s car outside a grade ten formal dance. I planned to not go near Trevor’s Captain Morgan. I shoved it into a corner of the counter where it wouldn’t get in the way of my food prep.