Page 123 of Full Contact

Kelsey didn’t argue. She picked up her phone, typed something short, and set it face down beside her plate.

***

The basement guest room was as cold as I’d promised. A space heater ticked and glowed orange by the dresser.

Mark came to bed with cold feet and rubbed them on my shins on purpose.

“That’s a foul.”

“Then call it.” He slid a hand under my T-shirt and up my ribs, and I stopped caring about his feet. He kissed me slowly. His mouth was warm and tasted of toothpaste.

The floor creaked overhead. It was Russ, crossing to the front door.

Mark laughed into my neck. I put my hand over his mouth, and he bit the heel of my palm.

“My brother is directly above us,” I said.

“He checks the locks twice. You told me.”

We waited. The floor creaked again, and the lock clicked. Mark took my wrist, moved my hand away from his mouth, and kissed me until the furnace kicked on.

***

The next morning, Josh was at the kitchen table with the elevator plans beside his cereal. Kelsey stood at the toaster in her hat. Mark sat with Russ at the end of the table, both of them bent over Russ’s phone, watching a video of a garage door that folded sideways. Russ kept backing it up so they could see how the hinges worked.

I reached past Josh for the coffeepot. He moved his bowl without raising his head.

“We need to go to the hardware store,” he said.

“The hardware store is a Christmas thing.”

“The bathroom fan needs a special screw,” Josh said.

Russ looked up. “Does it?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of screw?”

Josh smiled. “Whatever one isn’t there.”

Kelsey faced the toaster and stifled a laugh.

“I can take you after breakfast,” I said.

“Can it be just us? You and me, Uncle Clare?” He pushed the plans an inch toward Mark’s end of the table. “Mark can keep working on the elevator if he wants.”

I opened my mouth to say that Mark would like to come. Then I didn’t. I thought about the back aisle of the hardware store, and Josh in the car telling me random things in the order he thought of them. I wanted that morning too.

“Yes,” I said. “Just us.”

Mark set Russ’s phone down. “I’m not touching the elevator without the designer present. That’s a basic rule of engineering.” Then, to Russ: “Trier says the slot-hockey game is rigged.”

“It isn’t rigged,” Russ said.

“It is,” Josh said. “Dad’s fixed three rods, and they’re all on his end.”

Kelsey set a plate of toast in front of me and squeezed my shoulder on her way back to the counter.