Page 87 of Full Contact

Trier

Russ took my suitcase before I could put it in the truck. “Kelsey said to bring you straight home.”

“Was I likely to request a detour?”

“I was, but apparently we have enough cheese.”

“Do we?”

“You can ask her. I’ve asked twice.”

I decided not to risk a conflict, and Russ drove straight home. The house smelled of cloves and brown sugar from the ham glaze, and pine from the real Christmas tree in the front window. It was fat at the bottom and listing slightly toward the couch.

Half of the ornaments were clay and had Josh’s name scratched into them. I’d barely set my suitcase inside the door when Josh came around the corner in socks and took hold of my wrist.

“You have to see the doorway.”

The marble run had grown since the photograph. It came down the bookcase, crossed the top of the piano, dropped into the laundry basket, and stopped at the hallway door. On the floor beneath the doorway, a sheet of graph paper lay flat under two of Russ’s shoes. It showed two tall towers, a long curved track between them, and many arrows.

“The design’s finished,” Josh said. “I just need someone tall enough to build it.”

“So you invited me to do manual labor.”

“You’re here because you’re tall,” Russ muttered.

I dug the bridge book out of my suitcase and handed it to Josh. He opened it to a page marked with a strip of yellow paper: information on a suspension bridge with cables running up to two towers.

“You marked this before you brought it,” Josh said.

“So you’d know which part to read.”

The kitchen counter had vanished under food: the ham under foil, two pies, rolls rising under a dish towel, and a slow cooker of little smoked sausages that Josh considered a fundamental part of Christmas Eve. Kelsey was wearing a Steamers sweatshirt and a knit hat.

“Get the white platter down for me, would you?”

I reached above the refrigerator and handed it to her, then poured myself a coffee.

“Cold in here?” I asked, nodding at her knit hat.

“Your brother won’t touch the thermostat. The hat’s for the house, not for you.”

“The sweatshirt’s for me.”

“The sweatshirt’s my loyalty.” She took the platter to the sink. “Your weak side against Nashville. Second period, six minutes in. Their center went low, your winger followed him, and nobody picked up the guy coming in from the point.”

“Merry Christmas, Kelsey.”

“Merry Christmas. He had the whole back door.”

“He missed the net.”

“By this much.” She pulled soapy fingers from the sink, holding them an inch apart.

“We won,” I said.

“I watched the whole game. I think you got a little lucky.”

Russ came in for the slow-cooker cord and opened the drawer by the stove. “She’s right,” he said.