Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(30)

“I don’t remember falling down the stairs.”

“Doc said that was common with concussions.”

“I don’t remember doing the laundry.”

He shrugs. “It’s your chore. You didn’t like me doing it, said I ruined your delicates.”

The words strike a chord in my mind. Yes, I said that. And yes, laundry is my job. Yet I can’t picture the washer and dryer. Maybe it’s like the plates in the kitchen. I can’t try to remember where they are; I have to simply reach for one.

“Am I allowed in your workshop?”

Thomas’s lips curve into a crooked smile. He leans close, whispers in my ear: “Why? Worried I keep the bodies of my dead wives in there?”

I tell him seriously, “Yes.”

“Come on, then. I’ll take you to the work shed. You can behold the brilliance for yourself.”

He’s already dressed in jeans and a button-up blue flannel shirt. Now he throws a tan vest over the top and walks to the back door off the sunroom. For the first time, I notice the work boots placed neatly beside the door. He slides them on, while gesturing to my own bare feet. Belatedly, I retreat to the entryway, where I open up the hall closet and pull out a pair of rubber-soled L.L. Bean slippers without thinking about it. Another muscle memory, from six months of living in this house, setting these patterns.

It’s cold outside. I shiver from the damp as we both step through the door. The sky is gray, the ground still wet from days of rain. Late fall in New England is not beautiful. The trees are skeletal, the grass brown. November isn’t a season as much as it’s a transition; from the fiery reds of October to the soft white of December.

We should spend November in Arizona, I think, and almost immediately know that we talked about it. I had brought it up, after one of my crying jags, when the short days and gray skies felt like more than I could bear.

But clearly we hadn’t gone. Maybe because of my concussions. I was high maintenance even then.

The work shed is bigger than I pictured. Certainly larger than a garden shed, closer to a single-car garage. It has aluminum-gray sides, like a prefab building plopped down on the back of the property. We don’t have any visible neighbors to be horrified by the unattractive sight, just us, and I guess we didn’t mind, because we’re the ones who put it here. Thomas poured the slab himself; he’s handy that way. Then men came with the panels, and in a matter of days it was done. Basic but insulated, with a gas heater and full electricity. No plumbing; Thomas comes into the house for that.

In the spring, I wanted to plant shrubs or build a berm covered in bushes and flowers to soften the view of the ugly shed from the house. Another project Thomas and I had talked about. Another project that now, given my series of “accidents,” we’ll probably never get done.

Sergeant Wyatt had implied that I was isolated, maybe even at risk from my husband. How many concussions could one wife have, and six months later why didn’t we have friends? Even the beginnings of a relationship with our neighbors?

But we don’t. I knew that even before I asked Thomas; it’s just him and me and has been for a very long time. We tell each other we are happy but I think we’re lying. And maybe not even to each other, but to ourselves, because that’s the easiest lie to tell, and the most difficult to unravel later.

The door of the workshop has a deadbolt lock. Thomas pulls the key out of his pocket, does the honors. I think the deadbolt is overkill, until I see all the materials inside.

Don’t think where the plate is; just reach for the plate, I tell myself. But the logic doesn’t work here. There is no muscle memory to call upon; I step inside the musty depths and immediately lose all sense of bearing. This is Thomas’s domain, not my own, and already I feel confused and faintly anxious.

Thomas snaps on the overhead lights. I wince, putting up a hand reflexively to block the intensity. Thomas catches the gesture and flips another switch, eliminating half of the lights. Only then can I lower my hand, take it all in.

The space feels surprisingly large, the rafters exposed, roof vaulted. Straight ahead is a row of folding tables, placed end to end. Workspace, like a countertop for production designers.

The walls are lined with pegboard and metal shelving units, the pegboard dripping with various tools, the shelving units weighed down with pieces of wood, plastic pipes, other raw materials. The perimeter of the shed is too much for me. Too jumbled, too busy. Instead I find myself focused on a single piece of machinery, new, about the size of an extremely large printer and set in a place of honor on its own table. When I approach the machine, I smell plastic and feel a curious sense of dread.

We fought about this. He wanted it; I didn’t. Apparently I lost, because here it is and I’m still resentful.

“What is it?” I ask.

Thomas is regarding me closely. Does he wonder if I remember the machine’s history? Is he debating how much to tell me even now? After all, if the wife can’t remember the argument, who’s he to refresh her rage?

“It’s a three-D printer,” he says at last.

I nod, and several more pieces of memory click into place. “You create a digital design of the custom object, any object, then feed it to the printer and it builds a three-dimensional replica in plastic.”

“That’s right.”

“Like a fake knife for a movie set?”