“Oh—uh—I guess I could do it that way,” I assented. “Hold on.” I paged through the notebook and felt only marginally useful as I called the measurements. Jes ran the table saw, Marlin positioned the lumber, and Jack screwed it into place.

Tyler stood off to the side. He’d given me his job, only to be polite.

“You guys are very good at working together,” I observed as they glued the foam to the frame with absolute precision, without a smudge, without a drip, without a single mistake.

“No kidding.” Jes snickered. She looked at Tyler with an expression that said, I cannot wait to be free of this stupid idiot.

I used two very fine hot knives to cut the foam: both curved, one like a scythe, the other a shallow crescent. The foam sloughed off in sheets, falling away in buttery peels as I formed the long, rounded lines of the frame. I felt them watching me—and I didn’t imagine it—there were waves of approval as I cut the support wedges in the back, the ones that would become the notches upon which the paintings hung. They murmured something to each other, and I imagined that it was kind.

When it was time to apply the latex, I tried to speak to Jes, Jack, Marlin, and Tyler with the voice that I used for assistants. I did not bring my hand back when we reached for the same tool or move out of the way when we stepped in the same direction, and I bit my cheeks every time the word sorry threatened to bubble up from the back of my throat.

After a few hours, a new hierarchy settled into place: When I moved, they stepped aside to let me pass. When I reached for something, they handed it to me. They waited for me to speak before speaking. And at the end of the day, there were three molds—something that would have taken me a week on my own.

“This—this looks like years of work,” Marlin said to me as I locked up, pointing to my paintings. “You did this alone? In three months?”

“It was more like two. Yes, I did.”

She shook her head. “It’s enough to break someone.”

“Carey did it,” I said to her. “Carey did it a thousand times.”

“I guess so,” Marlin said, turning away. “I guess Carey did.”

*  *  *

The next morning, I tacked a chart to the wall.

Tyler arrived first. I pointed at the chart without making eye contact.

“Will you speak to me today?” he asked.

“No.”