Page 43 of Snow Blind

"That is only the tip of the iceberg of my last two days," she said. "That man made a personal visit. I think he knew me and Bryan were in the other room, and he basically told me to go sit my ass down and be quiet for a minute."

Alarm bells were going off in his head. The last thing she ever needed to do was to come face to face with the slimiest eel in the pool. "Helen, you were in the same room with Kurtzwilde, and who is Bryan?"

"Bryan is Passion Fruit’s love slave captive, soon to be lover, I guess," she told him. "No, and I wasn't in the same room with that man. I was hiding in the other room with Bryan and Candy the Cane Corso. You know that damned dog weighs 100 pounds. That bitch knocked me down and pinned me to the floor like we were in a wrestling match."

Mustang could see the distress in the normally calm woman. She wasn't calm. He was concerned. "Baby, do we need to get away for a few days?"

"No, I need to create cutesy shit with people's names on the items. I need to make love to you each morning before sending you off to work, and if my cooter ain't too sore, hit that monkey again when you come through the door in the evening," she said, winking at him.

"Monkey? Helen, are you okay?"

Helen looked at the man she’d married. He was all sorts of handsome, great in bed, and a provider. He was a man who’d married her to ensure she had medical insurance, among other things. He also loved and supported her desire to be a Technician. She had to peel her emotions off her sleeve and put on her big girl panties. Time was what she needed to grow a larger pair.

"I'm home with my man. I can't be more okay than that," she told him. "My role in your life is to be the woman who loves and supports you. In between me going to do odd jobs for my side gig, I am a crafter. Your co-workers will know me as Suzie Homemaker, who sends treats to the office. I'm going to be okay. I need this time with you in our home."

"Roger that," he said. "The kitchen towels are cute. Helen, whatever you need. I'm here for you."

"I know, Jay, and I'm here for you as well," she said. "I guess next week I need to schedule a visit with my dad so you two can meet. I also need to make gifts for the boys and get those in the mail. I'm thinking about monogrammed bathrobes.:"

"Hell, I want one of those myself," he said.

"I got you, Jay," she said, plating the food for dinner.

She was home. She had three weeks to clear her head and wrap her mind around creating accidents for bodies alive and the recently deceased. There were no happy chance meetings or weird coincidences. The universe had spoken. Her understanding of death had been altered. In truth, so had Helen.

****

NEVER IN HIS ADULTlife would he have imagined the words which formed in his head. He wouldn't speak them aloud, but he felt the phrasing all the way to his soul. Helen’s first weekend home, the change in her creating cutesy shit, as she called it, was a version of the woman he'd never seen. She was nesting all over the place, and he actually liked it. Hell, most of it he was loving, and by the end of the first week, in his heart he thought, "Fuck them Technicians. My wife needs to be home with me."

He'd never considered himself to be a selfish man, but Helen made him want to chop down trees to make her new pieces of furniture. On Monday, when he returned to work, in his lunch box was a note and a yummy lunch that wasn't leftovers from the night before. He opened the note in her girly handwriting, which almost looked like a Disney font, to read an inappropriate note about his stroke game with suggestions on methods to make her moan like a woman going into labor.

"Oh, my God," he said aloud, nearly choking,

"You okay over there, Neary?" James, his Deputy Director, asked.

"Yeah, my wife has a twisted sense of humor," he replied, smirking at the contents of the lunch pail.

"Hope to meet her soon," James replied.

"Perhaps," Mustang added. The note placed him in a good mood for the rest of the day. He had become excited to go to work each day and more excited to come home in the evening to see what his little bird had created in their nest. To say he was surprised was an understatement.

The mantle, which initially only held a photo of the two of them, was now covered with frames and photos of him and Helen doing activities with the family. He smiled at the photo of him and Naomi with her pony Misses Sprinkles. The image which really tugged at his heartstrings was a photo of Mark, his father, and Michael, his brother, standing around the grill, laughing.

"Helen, when did you take these photos?" he asked, looking at the photo of him in the kitchen with Ruth, licking the batter off the tines from the cake paddles.

"I have a lot of photos of you on my personal phone," she said, walking down the hall with a load of laundry.

He followed her but stopped in the hallway. This morning, the walls had been bare. This afternoon, there were printed canvas images of moments from their lives. A black-and-white image on canvas of Oscar and him working on the desk hung in the center of the wall on the right. Surrounding the larger image were smaller black and whites of Jeffrey and him working on the car, Stephen and him at the grill, and Apple and him at the table talking shop. There was also a photo of Ricky and him, but Mustang was looking at the man as if he were a suspect he'd pulled over on the side of the road. However, his breath was taken away by the imagery on the left.

In the center was a brightly colored image of him and Helen on their wedding day at the courthouse. He remembered the woman taking several photos with Helen's phone but never imagined this. He also didn't imagine seeing the image of them in his workshop in Oregon making the end tables or of the two of them in his canoe.

"Fuck them Technicians," he said, feeling emotional at how their home was coming together. "Helen, this is wonderful. I love all of this. You are amazing."

She'd never had the opportunity to nest like this before, and she planned to take full advantage of having a home to share with a man who told her encouraging words, hopeful words, loving words, like she was amazing. It felt good.

It felt even better on Friday when she arrived at his job in time for the holiday celebration, he'd mentioned to her in passing. Mustang received a call that a visitor was waiting for him at the front desk. He arrived to see Helen standing there with a large wicker basket she used to do laundry.

"Honey, what are you doing here?" he asked, surprised to see her. He was also surprised at the basket loaded with lots of cellophane wrapped items. "Let me get that...what is this?"

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