Nancy dumps spaghetti noodles into a pot of boiling water. The water bubbles up and spills over the side, hissing as it hits the open flame of the burner. Next to the pot on the stove is a pan of simmering marinara sauce. She dips a wooden spoon in and gives it a taste.
Satisfied, she turns to Danny, who is sitting at the kitchen table next to Benji, and says that dinner will be ready in ten minutes.
Both Benji and Danny are drawing. Using crayons, Benji is drawing a dinosaur fighting a robot. Using a mechanical pencil, Danny seems to be drawing designs for whatever it is he hopes to build. He takes a slug of his beer—his third since they got home—but doesn’t take his eyes off the illustration.
Danny and Benji look cute together, both locked in concentration. Nancy’s heart swells. She has long had her doubts about Danny as a father figure. But now that he is no longer dealing drugs, she feels like he could be a better role model for her son.
It is nice to see him engrossed in something. She doesn’t know what the heck he is planning to build—he still hasn’t told her—but it’s a relief just seeing him focused on something besides how difficult life has been lately.
Curious about what he’s doing, Nancy tries to sneak a peek at the drawing. He’s sketched out some kind of box, with the two-by-fours serving as the frame and the plywood serving as the walls. Danny has no background in technical drawing as far as she knows, but it looks like he’s done a decent job of illustrating his design. He’s even included measurements for the dimensions of the box. Next to the box, he’s drawn what appears to be the PVC pipe. She can’t quite figure out what the PVC pipe is for. It looks like it comes out of the box, but there’s nothing in the drawing to indicate what it connects to.
“Honey,” Nancy says, placing her hand on Danny’s shoulder, “did you hear me? Dinner’s almost ready.”
Danny jerks his head up, as if coming out of a trance.
“I’m not hungry,” he says. “I’m going to skip dinner tonight. I want to go ahead and get started on this.”
He grabs his piece of paper and rises. He opens the refrigerator and pulls out two more bottles of beer. Before heading to the garage, he stops and gives Nancy a peck on the cheek.
At first, she feels a stab of resentment. If she’d known he wasn’t going to eat with them, she and Benji could have just eaten leftovers. She wants life to be as normal as possible around here. She wants them to act like a family. If Danny is running off to do something without explanation, that seems more like the Danny of old. But the kiss on the cheek—that quick act of tenderness—erases her bitterness. Despite all the pressure he’s under, Danny can still take the time to make her feel special.
As she and Benji eat their spaghetti, they can hear a power saw running in the garage, biting through plywood and two-by-fours. Then Danny begins driving nails into the wood. Nancy tries to make Benji laugh by slurping her noodles up. He gives her a half-hearted smile, but he keeps looking distractedly toward the garage.
After dinner, Nancy and Benji decide to watch a movie. They turn the movie up loud so they can hear it over the racket. At some point halfway through, Nancy realizes that the banging and sawing have stopped. After she tucks Benji into bed, she goes out into the garage to investigate.
Danny is nowhere to be found.
But the box he was building is there. It’s about six feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep, with a hinged lid. The edges are caulked, so the box will be watertight, except for a two-inch hole in the lid where it looks like the PVC pipe will connect.
Nancy can’t figure out what Danny could possibly mean to use it for. What is he planning to put in it?
The damn thing’s big enough to hold a person.
She presses the button and raises the garage door. Danny’s van is missing from the driveway. She steps out onto the concrete and looks up and down the street. The heat has finally broken, and the cool air feels refreshing. But Nancy has a sinking feeling. Again, disappearing in the middle of the night without explanation is behavior typical of the old Danny.
She forces the doubt away.
You just need to trust him, she tells herself.