Page 61 of Nave
And excited for the first time in days.
“Oh, good,” Ariah greeted me about twenty seconds after her dogs came up to say hi. “Kit was just texting you.”
“What’s up?”
“You need to talk Lolly into coming to stay at the clubhouse with you.”
“What? Why? What happened?” My spine stiffened, worried they’d said or done something to upset her.
“The wiring on her solar panels is screwed up. I have a call out to someone for it, but she can’t stay there without electricity. Without air. And she won’t listen to us about staying with one of us.”
“How long has it been out?”
“Since last night. She didn’t wake us to tell us. Just suffered all night. She put her rechargeable fan on Edith and justsweltered herself. Wouldn’t even turn the truck over to use that air conditioning.”
“Jesus. Okay. Yeah. I’ll get her out of here.”
I marched right over to the motorhome. The door was already open, but it felt like getting smacked in the face with the closed-up heat inside.
Edith was asleep in front of her little fan.
Lolly was sitting on the bed, fanning herself with one of her library books.
“Lolly, what the fuck, babe?”
Her eyes snapped open as I took in her red face, the way her tank and shorts were stuck to her body with sweat. Even her hair looked wet.
“Did they call you? I told them not to call you.”
“They didn’t. But they should have. As soon as they found out.”
“To be fair, I just told them an hour or so ago, and they spent the last hour trying to figure out the solar panels.”
“Loll, you can’t stay in here like this. Why didn’t you at least go sit in Kit or Ria’s houses?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” I put down the plate and started toward the bed, dropping down to pull out the plastic containers under the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“Grabbing you a few changes of clothes.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re coming to stay with me until the panels are fixed. I’m not having you stay somewhere as hot as this.”
I expected her to argue, since she’d dug in her heels with the girls.
But her gaze slipped to mine. And I hated that I couldn’t read whatever emotion I saw flicker there.
“Okay,” she agreed.
“Okay,” I said, nodding.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lolly
