Chapter 16: Midwinter Storm

February 14–17, 2021

The storm arrived without warning on Valentine’s Day (a freak Arctic front that slid down the West Coast and punched California in the face with ice and wind).

By 6:00 p.m. the power flickered once, twice, then died with a sound like the world exhaling.

The house went dark and instantly cold.

Bob lit the fireplace in the master bedroom (the only one with a working flue), dragged every blanket and comforter into a nest on the California king, and called them upstairs.

They came barefoot, carrying candles and the last of the good whiskey.

Outside, the wind howled like something alive and angry. Inside, four bodies stripped naked and crawled into the nest (instinct older than language: heat is shared, skin to skin).

Bob lay in the center (back against the headboard, legs spread). Susan curled into his left side, head on his chest, thigh over his. Nawana mirrored her on the right, one arm flung across to hold Susan’s hand. Alicia burrowed between his legs, face pressed to his stomach, arms wrapped around his hips like she could anchor him to the earth.

The temperature dropped fast.

They piled blankets until only faces and entwined limbs showed (a mountain of wool and down lit by flickering candlelight).

Seventy-two hours began.

Hour 1–12: laughter, whiskey, stories told in the firelight.

Nawana confessed she still had her daughter’s baby teeth in a velvet pouch in Miami. Susan admitted she had never learned to swim (grew up landlocked in Tehran, terrified of deep water). Alicia whispered that her first rope top had died in her arms at forty-eight (leukemia, slow and cruel), and she had sworn she would never love anyone that old again until Bob walked into her life at seventy-two.