Page 33 of Home Ice

I pointed at his sleeve. “You picked her up?”

“She leaned,” he said. “Once she decides you’re furniture, she really commits.”

“And Trier knows you stayed?” I asked.

“He texted when he got home. She was eating.”

I let a beat pass. “Come and look at the drawer,” I said.

We walked over to a walnut chest of drawers. It belonged to a client in Andersonville.

“You remember the corner you held,” I said.

“The dovetail. The test one.”

“That was the practice run for this.” I pulled out the drawer.

It came out silently. Rafe crouched slightly to put his eyes level with it, hands behind his back.

“Do it again,” he said.

I pushed the drawer in and pulled it out again.

“It doesn’t make any sound.”

“It doesn’t because it can’t. There’s a sixty-fourth of an inch clearance on a side. It’s less when the humidity makes the wood expand in July.”

I tipped the drawer up so Rafe could see the runner. “And this is waxed, not greased. Grease holds dust, and dust acts like sandpaper. Wax burnishes in. My grandfather waxed runners with a candle stub, and I have never found a better tool for it. I’ve looked because it annoys me.”

“Why does it annoy you?”

“Because I own planes that cost hundreds of dollars, and the correct tool for this job is a buck at Target.” One corner of Rafe’s mouth rose at that.

“Here.” I slid the drawer free of the chest and held it out to him. “Hold it for a minute. You held it when it was only a corner.”

He took it in both hands. He turned it and found the dovetails at the corners. I watched him find the one he’d held on his previous visit.

“It’s part of the furniture now,” he said.

“The proper place for it.”

He handed the drawer back with both hands, and I slid it back home.

Rafe turned toward the bench, where the day’s tools were still out from the shelf work. He pointed at a plane. “Can I ask what that one does? It’s the one you were using when Max brought me by the first time. It sounded like—like skating. Separate long strokes, like skates.”

I looked at him for a moment. Then I took a scrap of straight-grained cherry off the rack and set it in the vise.

“Take your jacket off,” I said. “Relax, and I’ll show you how to plane.”

He shrugged out of the jacket, folded it in half, and set it on a stool. I handed him an apron, and he put it on.

“Stand here.” I positioned him at the end of the bench, square to the cherry in the vise. “Plant your feet like you’re ready for a faceoff. Wider.”

“You know about faceoffs?”

“I watched the clip, and I know you don’t stand narrow.” I handed him the plane. He took it in both hands, holding it the wrong way. “It’s not a trophy. It’s a tool. Front hand on the knob, back hand on the tote, like this.” I moved his back hand down and turned his front hand a quarter so the palm rode the knob instead of gripping it. His hands were warm.

“I’m actually going to do this?”