Page 12 of Heating Up (Nugget)
“We touched base,” he said, hoping to leave it at that.
“And?”
“She’s getting married next weekend.” Aidan watched his sister’s mouth drop open.
* * *
The house seemed darker than usual. “Mom, you home?”
“In here.”
Dana followed the faint voice into the den. “Why do you have all the lights out?”
Her mother just shrugged and muted the sound on the television. The air smelled stale. Dana opened a few windows.
“The air conditioner is on.” Betty got out of her wing chair, went to the thermostat, and switched off the cooler. Only fifty-eight years old, she’d gone completely gray, her once lithe frame stooped over like an old woman’s.
“Dad still at the factory?” It was six; he should’ve been home by now.
“Fourth of July.”
Dana had forgotten the holiday was just a week away. Calloway Confections was famous for its seasonal red, white, and blue chocolate stars. Cadbury might have the lock on chocolate Easter eggs, Hershey on Christmas Kisses, but only Calloway did the Independence Day stars. This time of year, her father worked overtime to make sure the stores were stocked.
Dana used to love going to the factory with her father, where she would spend hours in the observation room with her face pressed against the glass, watching hundreds of chocolate candies, toffees, and caramels roll from conveyor belts into the old-timey tins that had become Calloway’s signature. Her great-grandfather had founded the company, and since her father had taken over the reins, Mars, Hershey, and Nestlé all had come calling. Next to them, Calloway was small potatoes with limited distribution—just the West and Southwest. But the name had become synonymous with quality, and Goliaths like Hershey wanted to add it to their list of luxury candy brands.
Dana had pleaded with her parents to sell, take the money and move away. Away from the river and the memories and this house, once the happiest of places, now a mausoleum.
“Aren’t you going to ask about my meeting . . . where I’ll live?”
Her mother had returned to the chair and unmuted the sound on the TV. “Of course, dear.”
Dana grabbed the remote and turned the television off. “The contractors say it’ll take a year to rebuild. But they also have some wonderful ideas of how I can add a second story and reconfigure the main floor to have a bigger kitchen and a great room. It’ll really increase the resale value.”
“That’s certainly something positive.” Betty gazed out the window into the distance.
“In the meantime, I’m sharing a house with a local firefighter,” Dana said, but her mother was no longer listening. She’d slipped into Never-never Land.
Dana presumed that wherever that was, Paul was there too. Her father at least pretended to be present. She supposed he had to emerge from the grief that gripped both her parents like a fist long enough each day to run his company. He’d been the one she’d called the night of the fire, hoping he’d come get her from the Lumber Baron. But he’d simply told her to sleep tight and things would be better in the morning. Sometimes she wondered whether her parents would even have shown up to claim her body if she had died in the fire.
“I’m taking a swim,” Dana said. It was ninety degrees in Reno.
She climbed the long staircase to her old bedroom and pawed through her chest of drawers, looking for a swimsuit, planning to take one back with her to Nugget, along with whatever clothing she found that still fit her. Most of it was stuff from high school that she’d left behind when she’d gone to USC. Like everything else in the nearly nine-thousand-square-foot brick behemoth, nothing had been touched since Paul’s death. Her room looked exactly the same as when she’d left it. Thank God Sally still came every day or the place would be covered in dust and cobwebs, like Satis House inGreat Expectations.
At the back of one of the drawers, she found a one-piece, stripped, and shimmied into it. It was snug, the bottom wedging up her butt, but no one would see her. Jogging back down the stairs, she went through the sunroom, threw the doors open, and closed the screens. The house needed light and fresh air. From the casita she grabbed a fluffy towel, threw it on a deck chair, and did a high dive from the board into the water, staying under for as long as she could hold her breath. It felt so cool that she wished she could stay beneath the surface forever.
After running around Reno most of the afternoon, buying a new phone, mattress, clothes, makeup, and other necessities she’d lost in the fire, she’d been ready to collapse from heat exhaustion. She would’ve stayed the night here, in her old bed, and headed back to Nugget first thing in the morning, but the oppressiveness squeezed her like a vice. Watching her mother, a woman once so alive, sit in front of the television, catatonic . . . it was too much.
She swam a few laps, got out, and toweled off. Instead of going in the house with her wet suit on, she took it off in the casita, hung it on a hook to dry, wrapped herself in the towel, and went back to her room to dress. She rummaged through her closet and found a couple of pairs of old pants and shirts she could at least use for painting and hanging around the house. In the drawers she found a few nightshirts and a silky robe she’d forgotten about. Now that she’d be living with Aidan, her sleepwear would need to be modest. It wasn’t that she walked around in the buff, but nothing like the see-through nightgown she’d had on the previous night when he’d seen her underwear and God knew what else.
Her face flushed just thinking about it. It was ridiculous, but Dana felt twice as embarrassed because Aidan was so insanely good-looking. She wondered what his ex was like and why they’d broken up. Clearly it had been serious if they’d been living together.
Dana pulled down a duffel from the top of her closet, packed the clothes she planned to take, and carried it down the stairs.
“Are you leaving, Dana?” Her mother came into the hallway.
“Yes. I have a forty-five-minute drive and want to get to Nugget before it’s dark.”
“What do you have there?” Betty eyed the duffel bag.
