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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.
    â€œI’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 in Great 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.
    â€œAre you leaving, Dana?” Her mother came into the hallway.
    â€œYes. I have a forty-five-minute drive and want to get to Nugget before it’s dark.”
    â€œWhat do you have there?” Betty eyed the duffel bag.
    â€œJust some old clothes I found to hold me over until I can replace everything I lost in the fire.”
    â€œNothing of Paul’s, right?”
    â€œNo, Mom, nothing of Paul’s.”
    â€œOkay, dear, have a good trip home.”
    Dana didn’t bother to remind her that she no longer had a home. “I love you, Mom. Tell Dad I’m sorry I missed seeing him.”
    But she had already drifted back into the den, probably to watch her programs.
    Dana loaded the