Page 122 of Full Contact

Mark studied the shelf, then the lid. “You’re right. That’s a different problem. What if the cord went on all four corners?”

“Then it can’t tip the long way.” Josh was untying before Mark finished. “Uncle Clare, hold the top.” Mark didn’t so much as glance at me.

I held the top of the yardsticks while Mark fed Josh string. With four corners, the lid made it almost to the shelf before it swung sideways and dropped a car. Josh wrote something on his engineering paper.

“Better,” he said. “But not finished yet.”

***

Kelsey served the pot roast out of a blue roaster, the carrots gone soft and sweet in the juice and the potatoes split at the edges. She started on the Ironhawks before I’d finished filling my plate.

“Tuesday,” she said. “Third period. You pinched at the blue line with Varga already headed to the bench.”

“The puck was there.”

“For half a second.”

Mark jumped in. “Varga called for the change before Trier pinched,” he said. “I saw it from the press box.”

Kelsey pointed her fork at him. “Thank you.”

She wanted to know what Mark had on the walls in his condo, so he told them about the painting, the delivery mix-up, and the man in Milwaukee who’d signed for it.

“He hung it in his dining room,” Mark said. “His wife thought he’d bought it. He thought she had. Their dinner guests loved it. When I finally drove up to get it, he offered to buy it from me for less than I’d paid.”

Russ put down his fork. “How does anybody sign for a crate without asking who ordered it?”

“There’s a box in our garage from October,” Kelsey said. “You haven’t opened it.”

“That one’s addressed to me.”

Josh had been waiting for the crate story to finish. “Uncle Clare. Did you know Peaches predicted the Columbus game?”

“What?”

“She predicted the score. It’s on Mom’s phone.” He held up three fingers and folded two down. “She knocked two mice off the couch and kept one. Then you won two to one.”

I’d been there for that shoot. She knocked two off because they were on her cushion, and she kept the third because she was lying on it.

“Somebody in the comments worked it out,” Kelsey said.

“A lot of people agreed with him,” Josh said.

“How many people?” Mark asked.

“Like four hundred.”

“That’s a lot of people,” Mark said.

“That’s a comment section,” I said. “My cat isn’t a psychic. She barely watches.”

Josh looked at me like I’d made his point for him. “She doesn’t need to watch because she knows.”

Kelsey cut a potato in half. “Sample size of one.”

“What does that mean?” Josh asked.

“It means your mom won’t believe it until she sees it happen again,” Russ said, and passed Mark the carrots.