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sit down now. You take care.”
    Maggie had somehow maneuvered Trina to the porch. She closed the conversation by shutting the door. Trina stood there for a second and blinked. She reached up to knock on the door. Before she could, she heard a heavy deadbolt latch. The message was unmistakable. Gerard was her problem now. When she turned around, he was already in the passenger’s seat. Trina walked slowly back to the car.  

    [ Introduction ]
    Trina drove in silence. Next to her, Gerard seemed fascinated with the view through his window.  
    “Has your mother been sick long?” Trina asked. The question came out wrong. She meant it as a gentle inquiry to show respect and concern. Once it left her lips, the question sounded almost like an accusation of negligence or something.
    “Longer than she knew,” Gerard said. “She just found out, but apparently she has been sick a while.”
    “Oh.”
    “They’re going to take a bunch of things out and zap the rest,” he said. He sounded almost pleased by the idea.
    “Oh,” Trina repeated.
    “She’s not going to make it,” he said. “Everyone says so. It’s too far along.”
    Trina covered her mouth to stop herself from saying it a third time.
    “It’s okay,” he said. “Everyone dies.”
    Trina stole another glance at him and tried to do the math. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five. The wedding was maybe eight years earlier, and he had been a teen then. Maybe he was younger. It didn’t seem right though. He looked like he was going on thirty-five or forty. If she had met him on the street, Trina would have thought he was older than she was.
    “Not everyone is your mom,” Trina said. “I’m so sorry she has to go through this.”
    Gerard nodded. “I have trouble feeling bad about it. She’s not a big fan of doctors. When you don’t want to go to the doctor, you get in big trouble.”
    Trina thought about her bedroom door in the mobile home. It had a lock, but the door itself was flimsy.  
    She felt Gerard’s eyes on her. When she glanced over to him, he looked away.
    “I go to the doctor all the time,” he said. “Checkups, injections, you name it. I’ll probably live a long, long time.”
    Trina nodded.  
    “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “I’m on the Depo.”
    Trina fidgeted in her seat. “Pardon?” she asked. She wasn’t sure she wanted a clarification. Maggie had told her things on the phone, and they might be things that she didn’t want to know more about.
    “It’s chemical castration. It sounds scary, but it just evens me out. I don’t have to do crazy stuff on the Depo.”
    “Oh?”  
    Trina didn’t want to know about any of this. She definitely didn’t want to sit there wondering what “Crazy Stuff” included. Then again, it was somewhat comforting.
    “Just so you know—I take a walk every afternoon. I always come back. You don’t have to worry about that.”
    “Okay,” Trina said. Maggie had mentioned the walks as well. Trina was supposed to expect him to walk, and she was admonished to give him no spending money. He had his allowance, but apparently he often asked for money before his walk.  
    Until very recently, the idea of Gerard coming to live with her was still just a notion. There was no way she would be entrusted with the care of this man. But here she was, turning down the bumpy road that led to her little house.
    “I like your woods,” he said.
    “They’re your woods as much as mine,” she said.
    “Oh. Thank you,” he said.
    “I mean they’re Prescott woods. The family owns this whole strip. They’ve got it planted.”
    Gerard nodded.
    She bounced the car over a big pothole and the change bounced out of her cupholder. The road was good about four days a year. In the summer, it was all washouts and puddles. In the winter, she was lucky to get plowed by the end of the day. Maggie had promised that Dincey Prescott would come over and grade the road for her in August, but Trina would