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sound of trickling stopped. As he lifted her, grabbing a tuft of toilet paper first, she told me, “Just hold on to me with one hand the whole time I’m standing. Under my arm.” Evan repeated what she said as he wiped between her legs and dropped the tissue into the toilet. He pulled her underwear back up and tugged down her skirt so he could pivot her back to the chair again. Then he flushed the toilet and I stepped out of his way so he could wash his hands.
    When he was done, I turned on the tap and wet my hands, squirting some soap into my palm and lathering up. I was scrubbing away unthinkingly at my wrists when I glanced up and realized Evan was toweling his hands a little more slowly than one normally does, and I glanced down at my wet hands and then at my face, now beet-red, in the mirror.
    “I don’t know why I just did that,” I said. Kate had moved to just outside the door, in the hall. She said something. I watched her mouth and caught the word “weird.”
    Evan hung up the towel and repeated, “This is weird, but mostly for you. I’m accustomed to it.”
    I wiped my hands on my jeans, my cheeks still hot. “I was feeling pretty relaxed till now. Probably makes you wish you had some old hand of a caregiver from an agency.”
    Kate shrugged. She was very eloquent with her shrugs. This one consisted of one shoulder lifted toward her ear, her head tilting just a little, an eyebrow raised. She had a mischievous grin. “You learn to make your own fun,” she said.
     
    AT THREE THE OTHER caregiver, Hillary, arrived. She was a tall, sturdy, blond nursing student with tiny octagonal glasses and a Teutonic briskness next to which I felt the urge to be rather frantic and talkative, my jokes sounding as though they ought to be punctuated with a clown horn. Nurses didn’t wear those little folded white hats anymore, but Hillary carried herself as though one sat upon her head at all times, crisp as a starched linen napkin.
    “How was your first day?” she asked me seriously. She wore her hair in a short, feathery cut, her downy earlobes unpierced and her body covered in a shapeless dun-colored T-shirt. We were all in the living room. Evan was seated on the arm of the couch. Kate was pulled up next to him, his hand on her shoulder.
    “It was great,” I said. I looked at Kate and Evan, who nodded briefly and in unison, their expressions unchanged. Were those diplomatic nods? “I watched today,” I went on. “But Evan did a fine job.”
    Evan and Hillary laughed, but Kate just smiled briefly. She said something, her expression serious. Evan asked her to repeat it, then nodded and turned to me.
    “Tomorrow you’ll get hands-on experience,” Evan said. “We try to make the first day kind of easy, but the second day we start to throw you in.” He looked apologetic.
    Hillary nodded. “They tried going really slow for one girl.” She glanced at Kate for approval. Kate nodded. “But after a month she still didn’t get some pretty basic stuff. So I got the boot camp, and so do you.”
    I laughed. “Oh, I doubt it’s really boot camp. I’m ready to get started.”
    Hillary smiled skeptically. “Great,” she said. She hung her bag over a chair and then looked to Kate. “Well.”
    It was my cue to go. I said good-bye and jogged out to my car.

two
    A T HOME I SURVEYED the magazines on the coffee table, the turned-off television. There were no messages on the machine, which was odd. Liam almost always called on Thursdays. I picked up the phone to check the dial tone. Of course it was fine.
    I may as well call someone. I dialed my parents’ house.
    “Bec,” my mother said. “How’s your semester finishing up?” My parents lived in the same house in Oconomowoc where I’d grown up, an hour away from Madison. My mother was off from the doctor’s office on Thursdays in order to make up for the Saturday hours she worked instead. She would be at the kitchen table, sipping the decaf she switched to after