Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(29)

“You wake up?” Kevin asked softly.

“The timer goes off. Chicken. All done.”

“What do you do?”

“Thomas. He’s standing in the living room. He’s staring at me. Maybe I called out; maybe I said her name. I shouldn’t have done that. I get the chicken out of the oven. I put it on plates. I dish up rice. I set the table. Thomas watches me. He tells me I did good. One of my first successful dinners. We eat in silence. We didn’t used to eat like that, you know. We used to talk and talk and talk. We used to love each other.”

Wyatt and Kevin exchanged a glance.

“What do you do after dinner?” Kevin asked.

“I wash the dishes.”

“What about Thomas?”

“He has to work. His job is very important. He works. I clean the kitchen. But I drop one of the plates. It breaks on the floor. My hands are shaking. I’m tired. Weak. I used to be better than this, but now I’m tired all the time. Thomas is very patient with me. He has so much work to do, let alone the burden of babysitting his wife. I clean up the plate carefully, put the pieces in the outside trash, where hopefully he won’t notice them. I don’t want him to be upset.”

“What happens when Thomas is upset?” Kevin pushed.

“I don’t want Thomas upset,” Nicky repeated.

“After you clean up the plate, what do you do?”

Nicky fell silent. Her eyes were still closed, the tears now drying on her cheeks. “I shouldn’t do it,” she whispered. “It’s bad. I shouldn’t do it. He’ll be angry. I shouldn’t do it.”

“Do what, Nicky?”

“Shhh,” she whispered. “I’m leaving him.”


* * *



“BUT I DON’T,” she picked up, thirty seconds later. “I can’t. I need him. He’s all that keeps me safe.”

“Keeps you safe from what?” Kevin asked.

“You have no idea.”

“Do you and your husband have enemies? Has someone threatened you?”

“Blood drips from the thorns. Those awful roses, climbing up the wall.”

“Nicky—”

“You don’t understand just how bad I am.”

She spoke clearly, but once again Wyatt felt a twinge. She sounded more and more like an abused wife to him, a woman conditioned to think of herself badly, to feel as if she was constantly failing her husband.

“I’m tired now,” she said quietly. “My head hurts.”

“Just one minute more,” Wyatt pushed. “Does your head hurt now, like it did that night?”

“Yes. I should get ice. Lie down.”

“What were you wearing again?” Kevin backtracked, a strategy to ground her in the interview once more.

“Jeans. Black turtleneck. My favorite gray fleece.”

“You’re comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Lying on the sofa. But your head hurts.”

“Yes.”

“When do you get your coat?”

A pause. Eyes closed, Nicky frowns. “Coat?”

“Or did you grab your car keys first?” Wyatt prodded. He made a mental note to check with the hospital. The staff had bagged the clothing Nicky had been wearing that night. Just because they didn’t have grounds to seize the clothes didn’t mean they couldn’t ask the nurses or EMTs about them. Had Nicky come in wearing a coat? Because there hadn’t been one in the car.

But Nicky was shaking her head. “I’m resting on the sofa.”

“When do you get up again?”

“Vero,” she whispers.

“Vero?”

“I tried to fly. Just like Vero. But little girls were never meant to fly, you know. She crashed. I crashed. And now I have to find her. It’s the whole reason I came back from the dead.”

“You got in the car to find her?” Kevin asked.

“No, I got out of the car to find her.”

“Where were you driving to, Nicky?”

“Driving?”

“You’re in the car, you’re heading out into the night.”

But Nicky shook her head. She opened her eyes, stared at them directly. “I’m not driving,” she said. “I’m resting on the sofa.”

Wyatt studied her intently as the first piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “So who brought you the scotch?”

But Nicky wouldn’t answer.





Chapter 12




I THOUGHT THEY only had a few questions for you.”

I study my husband. The detectives have left, Thomas reemerging in their wake. I think of what the detectives didn’t tell me; for example, approaching a memory sideways is like brushing against sinister shapes in a darkened corridor. My memories feel cold even to me. As if they don’t want to be disturbed.

“Do we have friends?”

Thomas regards me curiously. He has showered while I was talking to the police. His hair is damp against his neck. It makes me want to touch it with my fingertips.

“Not yet,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“We just moved here; then you fell down the stairs, and . . . Feels like we’ve been meeting with specialists ever since.”