Tessa Leoni: Crash And Burn Part 11

"No tampering, no suggestions. I'm just going to ask you a series of questions, and you answer with what first comes to mind."

Nicky pursed her lips, continued to regard them uncertainly. But then, a short, faint nod. She was going for it.

"All right. Just close your eyes. Breathe deep. It's Wednesday night. Five o'clock. Where are you?"

"I'm at home."

"What are you wearing?"

"Jeans. Black turtleneck. Gray fleece."

"How do the clothes feel?"

"Soft. Comfortable. It's one of my favorite outfits."

"What are you doing in the house?"

"I'm . . . starting dinner. Chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I marinated them this morning in Italian dressing. Now I need to cook them. I think I will sear the outside, then finish them in the oven. I should make rice, too. Maybe steam some broccoli." She pauses. "I have a headache."

"Do you take something for it?"

"I already did. Four Advil. But it's not enough. The smell of the chicken . . . it's making me nauseous."

"What do you do?"

"I need to lie down. Sometimes, I wrap a towel around an ice pack and place it over my eyes. It helps."

"Now?"

"I get the chicken in the oven. I set a timer so it doesn't burn. I give up on the broccoli, but the rice is safe in the cooker. I don't need to worry about that. I get my ice pack, head for the sofa."

"Where is your husband?"

"I don't know."

"Is he in the house?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe in the work shed?"

"I don't know."

"Okay. You lie down with your ice pack."

"I think I fall asleep. It's dark and cold and comforting. I close my eyes. I like to sleep. When I sleep, Vero comes to me. She's happy, wearing her favorite flowered dress. She wants to dance, so I take her arms and we swing round and round. Except we are in the small room now, with the ratty blue rug and the tightly shuttered windows and the twin beds pressed so close together they might as well be one. The end is coming. This is our good-bye room. I know every time I look at the carpet. I should stop. It's so hard to keep seeing her like this. But I love her. I've always loved her. And I'm sorry. I never knew just how sorry a person could be, until it's like a weight and it's sinking you, and oh my G.o.d, the footsteps again. Down the hall. We both need to escape. Except only one of us ever makes it. Always me, never Vero."

"Nicky . . ." Wyatt studied the woman intently. Her eyes were still closed. She wasn't looking at them, but lost in her memory of a memory. And she was crying. Whether she was aware of it or not, tears were streaming down her face.

"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 brus.h.i.+ng 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."

"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 ch.o.r.e. 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 b.u.t.ton-up blue flannel s.h.i.+rt. 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 gra.s.s 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.