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Two weeks passed and it happened again, he was sweeping the garage. He'd never tell what he was doing in there before he swept it, and it was only when he was doing it that he got defensive and locked the door. She’d never had the guts to snoop around when it was open. They never talked about it, even when it first started. It just slowly went into place with “Nothing.” answering “What were you doing in there?” and a lock responding to the rattling handle. It became hard to remember a time before it when she got curious and started thinking about what was happening in the garage.
By then there had been tens of single use bags from the hardware store in the can, and plastic blisters with their cardboard backings, all ripped up with no remnants of inked out words. Receipts from the lumber yard crumpled up and thrown into the fire before she could look at them. Other undisguisable trash brought out to the garbage can the morning of collection. He was hiding something from her and she almost didn't want to know. Almost. Was what he was hiding enough to ruin everything? Was it worth it to find out? She thought these things often, but months passed before something that would put an end to this static disturbance came along.
She was at the grocery store, running errands when she bumped into Rocky, who worked and owned the lumber mill. “Dinah! How are you?” “Oh hello Rocky, I'm fine.” “You’ve got to tell me what Gunner is doing with all that wood. Every time I ask him, he brushes me off, he just wont tell!” “Oh you know Gunner, he just loves to keep it all to himself.” she said as calmly as she could, but inside she felt panicked, she wasn't the only one he wasn't telling. No, she told herself she was just being silly, Rocky and Gunner weren't friendly past familiarity, it wasn't so weird he hand told him. “ Haha, sure is his predisposition.” Rocky said with a smile “ Well Dinah I've got to get going, It's always nice to see ya.” Dinah hurried along with her shopping and was in a whirl by the time she got home.
How weird was it that he was hiding this? He usually did keep to himself but not to this extent. Was it really as secretive as it seemed? He wasn't close with Rocky, and she'd never explicitly asked him what he was doing in the garage, so was it really fair to think it was hidden? No, he locked the door and said it was nothing. If only he would tell her, and that it would be something so straightforward she would feel silly for suspecting anything else. Oh, what could he be doing there? She continued to ponder the question as she went into the basement, she went to turn the light on and it flickered dimly, and went out, she tried again and it flickered and went out a second time. After a few moments of trying the switch her whole body froze, her original purpose in the basement quickly flew out of her mind as she realized she had a reason to go to the hardware store. The hardware store where he was going to all the time. She had to go, not to pry, not to meddle, just to get lightbulbs for the basement, and if she happened to find something out about ‘it’, well what would happen?
By then it was too late to go to the store, so she swapped the laundry, and went back upstairs to make dinner. After, she got ready for bed and went out to the living room to brush her teeth at its sink. Gunner was there messing with a chair that had recently become wobbly. “Going to bed already?” he said, she nodded to him and looked away, out the window at the trees that lined the fence in the yard. She finished brushing her teeth and walked to the bedroom, she looked back at him, and he almost looked like he always had, but his eyes darted from the chair to her and back, and his jaw was so tense. She realized she too had a strained smile on her face and that they both knew now that it would all come crashing down soon, but she could hardly accept it, and he had been waiting for it for too long.
The next morning she woke up before her alarm, too early to go to the store, so she made breakfast, and sat down at the counter to eat. She finished eating and loaded her dishes in the washer, her alarm went off and she showered and got dressed, she grabbed her wallet and the car keys, and put them in her purse before heading out the door to the driveway.
On the drive over she mostly felt justified, she was just going to the store to get some lightbulbs, it's not like she wasn't supposed to be there. On the other hand she felt a bit guilty, like she was smashing his privacy, but this feeling was quickly washed away with irritation, he should have told her what he was doing, for so long he had been keeping it from her.
She parked at the back of the small parking lot, and sat in her car for a minute breathing, as doubt flashed. She got out of the car and went into the store, grabbing a basket. She walked aisle one, electrical, and skimmed the products looking for the color and size of the blister packs she had seen in the trash. She went down all the aisles doing this and had come up with fasteners, hinges, sponges, sandpaper, a variety of possibilities. She reached the other end of the store, and felt only disappointment. She knew nothing more than she did when she came here, nothing pulled her to a conclusion, or a guess. She stood there in the last aisle for a while, letdown from what she thought would explain everything, but gave her nothing. At the back of the aisle, she dropped her basket into a stack of them and walked down towards the registers, remembering to grab lightbulbs as she passed their aisle. She walked back to the car and got in, resting her forehead on the steering wheel for a time before driving home.
She went inside and got a cup of water, she took a few sips before putting it down to go to the bathroom. As she walked down the hall she passed the garage door closed and almost certainly locked. It put her off, and she stared at it as all her feelings from the past months, the past days rose up and whirled together, anger hit, anger over the distress he had caused her, with this door, and in an instant, rage made her yank at the handle. She met its resistance and stamped her foot, turning back to the bathroom and stomped her way there. She snatched a bobby pin and bent back its bend in time to jam it into the privacy locks pinhole. She heard the spring release and again yanked the handle, slamming the door into the wall.
He was less than shocked as he turned to look at her, halting his task, his expression turned forlorn as he saw the tears spilling from her eyes and the sullen frown on her face. A log, all but obliterated, was on the work bench, next to it a chisel, and sandpaper in his hand. She saw this and howled, “what are you doing?!” a charged silence lasted forever and no time at all, till he wearily responded “It never works out.”
“What? What doesn't work out? What are you doing?” she said, no longer yelling but still spoken firm as she looked around the room, the cabinet was open, the trash was full, and the carpet, the carpet was laid out but it was not flat, no, the edges touched the ground but the center was in the air atop a mound, a mound of what? All her attention was drawn to at soon as she saw it, she could not look away. She went to it and he started to step towards it to block her path, a worrisome look on his face, but that quickly morphed into shame and he stepped back, hands clasped in front of him. She stopped, crouched with her hand on the rug, and after a moment lifted it up and threw it off the mound. A pile of sawdust and chipped wood made up the mound and she found it wasn't that surprising. She found herself sighing, disappointed that this was the secret that he was keeping, a pile of sawdust in the garage. Why couldn't he have dealt with it in a normal way? Why'd he have to sweep it under the rug? They stood in silence, till she turned towards him, and walked right past grabbing the car keys. The unspoken but undoubtable understanding between them, that it was over, done.