flash. “With all those grandparents, it’s no trouble at all finding a sitter on short notice! Nice to meet you,” she tossed dismissively in Dana’s direction, then steered the children toward the counter.
Dana waited until they’d gotten outside to laugh.
“What’s so damned funny?” C.J. grumbled.
“You had no idea who she was, did you?”
“Of course I knew who she was,” he said, giving his lungs a second to adjust to the breath-sucking heat. “It was just her name that temporarily escaped me.”
“That is seriously pathetic.”
“Not nearly as pathetic as the way she threw herself at me,” he muttered.
“True. For a moment there I thought she was going to unhinge her jaws and swallow you whole. I take it she’s an old girlfriend?” she asked over his grunt.
“She’d like to think so. But I swear, the kids aren’t mine.”
She chuckled again, a sound he realized he enjoyed. Very much. He stole a glance at her profile as they walked to the car, thinking what a bundle of contradictions she was—self-deprecating one minute, completely comfortable with teasing him the next. About another woman’s putting the moves on him, no less.
He literally shook his head to clear it.
“So what happened?” Dana said as they got to the car and C.J. beeped it unlocked.
“Nothing, in the long run. Much to her chagrin.”
Once in the car, they clicked their seat belts in place almost simultaneously. “So tell me …” Dana briefly checked her makeup in the visor mirror, then turned to him, amusement glittering in her eyes. “Do women launch themselves at you on a regular basis?”
C.J. wasn’t sure which startled him more—the question itself or the ingenuousness underpinning it. He met Dana’s curious, open gaze and thought, There’s something different about this one, even as he said, “You do realize there’s no way I can answer that and keep either my dignity or your respect intact?”
“My … respect?”
He twisted the key in the ignition, backed out of the lot. “A Realtor who doesn’t have his clients’ respect isn’t going to get very far.”
“I see.” She faced front again, severing what he realized had been a gossamer-thin thread of connection, leaving him feeling both annoyed and relieved, which made no sense whatsoever. “Thanks,” she said, her voice definitely a shade darker than moments before. “For the soda, I mean. I needed that. And I promise not to be such a worrywart on Friday.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he said lightly, wondering why her soft laugh in response sent a chill marching up his spine.
In combat boots.
Sometime later, Dana let herself into her parents’ Northeast Heights home, breathing in the pomander of swamp-cooled air, that night’s fried chicken and a brief whiff of fresh roses, at once comforting and disquieting in its immutability. Her pull here tonight was equally comforting, equally disquieting. Tonight, she needed home, even though, paradoxically, this was the one place guaranteed to remind her of those areas of her life currently running on empty.
She found her father first, molded to a leather recliner in the family room, a can of diet soda clutched in one thick-fingered hand, the baseball game on the movie-theater-sized TV screen reflected in his glasses.
“Hey, Daddy. Whatcha up to?”
Gene Malone jerked up his head and grinned, his thinning hair fanned out behind his head like a limp peacock’s tail.
“Hey, there, baby!” he said over the announcer’s mellow drone. “What brings you around?”
Her father, a Sandia Labs retiree, was rounder, and balder, than he used to be, but the humor simmering behind his pea-soup-colored eyes was the same as always. Dana bent over to kiss his forehead, then crackled onto the plastic-armored sofa beside the chair, staring at the TV. “Nothing much. Just hadn’t seen y’all in a bit.” Trying to keep from frowning, she studied his face. “How’re you feeling?”
“Never better.” A heart “episode” the year before had scared the willies out of them; unfortunately, she strongly suspected he wasn’t following his diet and exercise regimen as scrupulously as he should. Especially when he said, “You know, this eating more chicken and fish routine really seems to be helping. I haven’t felt this good in ages.”
Uh-huh. Somehow, she didn’t think fried chicken was what the doctor had in mind. “Glad to hear it, Daddy. Where’s Mama?”
“In the den, sewing. Leastways, that’s what she said she was gonna do.” The leather squeaked when he shifted. “You know Trish called?”
This was news. “No. When?”
“Day or so ago, I don’t remember.”
“She say where she was?”
“Have no idea. You’ll have to ask your mother.”
Wondering, and not for the first time, how two people could live together for so long and talk to each other so little, she left her father to cheer on whoever and headed toward the smallest bedroom—the one that had been Trish’s for nearly eight years—which they generously referred to as a den. In a sleeveless blouse and cotton pants, Faye Malone sat with her back to the door, as comfortably padded as the futon beside her. As usual, she was keeping up a running conversation with the sewing machine while she worked, pins stuck in her mouth, tufts of touched-up-every-three weeks auburn hair sticking out at odd angles where she’d tugged at it while trying to figure something out.
Heaven knew, having Faye for a mother had never been exactly easy, and not only because of the woman’s habit of walking out on anyone who didn’t agree with her. Or her nearly obsessive protectiveness when it came to family. All her life, Dana had variously loved and feared the woman whose scowl had been known to set people to rethinking opinions held dear from the cradle. Tonight, however, Dana envied her mother her single-mindedness.
And her strength.
“What’s that you’re making, Mama?” she asked, once Faye had removed the pins from her mouth.
Her mother jumped and pivoted simultaneously. “Lord, honey, you gave me a start,” she said, laughing, dropping the pins into an old saucer by the machine. “This? Oh, um … just a little something for Louise at church.” She cleared her throat. “Her daughter’s havin’ her first baby next month.”
Dana sat on the end of the futon that had replaced the old iron daybed, fingering the edge of the tiny royal blue and scarlet quilt. The vent over the door blasted too-cool air at the back of her neck, making her shudder. “Pretty,” she managed, trying to keep her voice light, to ignore the tension vibrating between them. Not to mention the unmistakable wistfulness in her mother’s voice, that she’d never get to watch her daughter grow big with a grandbaby.
“So …” Eager to change the subject, Dana clasped her hands, banging them against her knee. “Daddy said Trish called?”
