and I fell in step behind him, into a living room crammed with objects and looking as if it hadn’t seen an update since 1979. A faded sofa and matching recliner, strewn with multicolored crocheted afghans, bracketed a grungy braided rug. The television rested on a discount-store corner stand with several dust-flocked ceramic figurines on top. Above the sooty fireplace hung the mounted head of a deer, elegantly alert, surveying the poor scene before him. And despite a small fan in one corner of the room, the air was dense with the smell of cigarette smoke, both fresh and stale. Right away I could see that it would be a lost cause to try to keep clear of secondhand smoke. If I wanted that, I’d have to stay in the barn.
Cade’s mother, Leela, blonde like him and, like Candy, looking older than I expected, rose to meet me as I stepped into the room. She shook my hand and greeted me warmly, then hugged Cade before quietly following Candy out to the back porch, where they seemed to be in the midst of assembling an egg incubator. The bright light of a clear bulb flashed on and off.
“I’m home, Dad,” Cade said to a man seated in a leather recliner in front of the television. The words sounded more ceremonial than anything else; his father, after all, could not have missed him coming in the door. But Cade had warned me that his dad, Eddy, had been foggy since his stroke, and he looked at his father with a gauging eye, as if to determine whether he had gotten worse since Christmas.
“So you are.” But his father looked at me, not Cade. A cigarette burned between his index and middle fingers, the long ash on the end lingering precipitously. He wore a long-sleeved plaid shirt despite the warmth of the room, and his hands bore dark red patches, the color of dried blood, that seemed to originate beneath his skin. Cade had told me Eddy was in his late fifties, but to my eye he looked much older, and his voice was thick. His gaze traveled from my feet to my eyes and back again. “That’s your girl, huh?”
“That’s my girl.”
“I’m Jill,” I offered. “Nice to meet you.”
He nodded unevenly but didn’t offer his hand. Cade asked, “Know where Elias is?”
“In the den. Same as always.”
Cade circled around the back of the recliner and led me into the room behind it. The space was larger and airier—an addition that encompassed a modern-looking kitchen-and-dining-room combination, as well as a nook that contained another TV and a couple of chairs. In one of these sat Elias, whom I recognized by his features and haircut but who was otherwise strikingly changed. Gone were the hard stomach and muscled chest that had flaunted themselves even from beneath his sandy-beige T-shirt. In their place were a significant gut and soft pectorals, and he carried the weight in his face, as well. When I had met him in the fall, his forearms were notable only because of their strength and deep golden tan. Now both were covered in tattoos. I blinked at him and tried to match the image I remembered with the one in front of me.
Cade took my hand and guided me to follow him. He stepped directly into Elias’s line of vision before he spoke. “Hey, bro,” he said. “How’s it hanging?”
Elias looked up from the television. “Hey,” he grunted. He met my eye and said, “Hi, Jill.”
I threw him a warm smile. “Hey, Elias. Great to see you again.”
“Did Mom and Dad tell you?” asked Cade.
“Yep. You knocked her up.” He half grinned and flicked a glance toward Cade. “Good job there, buddy. You ever heard of Trojans?”
“Yeah. They don’t work if you leave ’em in the box.”
“They sure don’t. Jill, hope to God it doesn’t come out looking like me or acting like Candy’s kids. If it has to be an Olmstead, at least its dad came from the deep end of the gene pool.”
“If you say so,” I said, and Cade threw me a joking scowl that made Elias snicker. “He’s got endurance, that’s for sure. I can’t believe he makes that drive all the time. It’s long.”
“Not long enough,” Cade said under his breath, and his brother chuckled again. I followed Cade up the stairs to a bedroom sandwiched between two others. He closed the door, then lay down on the full-size mattress and rubbed his eyes. “I’d like