her driveway, and we crunched through the snow and up onto the porch. Elias rang the bell with one gloved finger, trying to hold that huge plate of cookies in both arms like a squirming calf. When Piper opened the door she saw me first, because the cellophane was blocking Elias, and smiled.
“It’s the Olmstead boys,” she said, noticing my brother under there and taking the plate out of his hands. “Aww, thank you. Come on in.”
We stepped inside and Elias unzipped his coat. The woodstove pumped out blazing heat that shimmered the air in front of it like a mirage. I stomped the snow from my boots onto the rug. Piper crossed the room to set the cookies down on the dining table. She still had a fine little ass, but not for me.
“Elias, you must have just gotten back,” she said. “How was it?”
“Not too bad,” he said. I cut a sideways glance at him. He’d had his thigh torn open down to the muscle by a piece of shrapnel, seen friends die, killed people. But around Piper it came out like an underwhelming vacation.
“Slimmed down a little, didn’t you?” she said, and he looked at the ground and chuckled even though getting her to notice that had been the sole reason he’d opened up his coat. I gave him a bemused sort of look, because this was as close as Elias got to pulling out his A-game. But then something in his face changed and when I looked over I saw a guy had come in from the back porch with his arms full of firewood. As he arranged it in the fireplace, Piper asked Elias about where he was working now (he wasn’t) and if he thought things had gotten better for women now that the Taliban was gone. Latch onto that one, I thought, c’mon, dude, because Piper was a curious person, the type who really wanted to know about international politics and women’s issues. I could see in her eyes that she was hoping for a substantial sort of answer. But Elias had shut down. He just shrugged and said, “Nothing’s ever going to get better there. They all just want to kill each other. Far be it from me to stop ’em.”
The guy got done kindling the fire and came over. Piper introduced us. His name was Michael. I was going to ask where he went to school, but then he wrapped his arm around Piper’s waist and said to my brother, “Army vet, huh? Thanks for your service.”
Maybe all siblings have this problem, but sometimes with my brother I might as well consult a Magic 8 Ball to figure out what’s going on in his head and other times it’s like I know everything. These tiny cues of his, they become like a code. As soon as that guy touched Piper I glanced at Elias, saw him looking at the guy’s hand for a split second before he zipped up his coat. “It wasn’t for you personally,” he said, and Piper laughed uneasily while Michael shot Elias an offended glare.
I didn’t say anything during the drive home. Nothing about him smoking in my car. We stomped back into the house, right into the kitchen where my mom was washing dishes and my sister, Candy, was fussing around with a jelly roll cake. She had a big bowl of frosting on the island and was spreading it onto the cake in the pan. Mom asked, “You give the Larsens those cookies?”
Elias grunted a yes.
Candy licked her thumb and looked at Elias with reproach. “Well, you’re not giving them my Yule log cake.”
“Nobody wants your Yule log cake, Candy.”
“I’m just making sure. Since three-quarters of the Christmas cookies in this house just went down the street and now my boys hardly have any.”
“Don’t worry about it, Candy,” Mom scolded, low voiced. To Elias she said, “Did she like the cookies?”
“She,” Candy blustered. “Is there only one Larsen now?”
“Goddamn it, Candy,” said Elias. “Lay off.”
She shrugged and sucked the frosting from her index finger. “Don’t bark at me, Eli. Cade’s the one I’m surprised at, getting engaged while he’s off at school and then coming home to visit a girl he had a relationship with.”
I set my gloves on the table and didn’t dignify that with a reply. She hadn’t brought it up for any other reason except to imply to Elias that he was pursuing my sloppy seconds. Elias, though, took the bait like