The Lucky Ones(47)

Allison saw a woman walking toward her—fiery red hair, tall and fiercely lovely. She grabbed Allison in a rough embrace that almost knocked the wind out of her.

“Good to see you again, too,” Allison said to Thora, and though the words were slightly sarcastic, Allison was surprised by how deeply she meant them. Until she’d seen Thora again, she’d forgotten how much she’d missed her sister. While Allison had worshipped Roland and adored Deacon, she’d simply loved Thora. Her silly big sister. And Thora had been silly—a quirky, kooky kid through and through. She’d called Allison by a different pet name every day—Rascal and Rainmaker, Pilgrim and Tenderfoot. “Blow on my homework, High Roller. Luck be a straight A tonight,” Thora would say as Allison dutifully blew on her assignments like they were dice. Thora did Allison’s hair for her, helped her pick out her clothes for school, helped her buy her first bra, taught her how to shave her legs but told her she never had to if she didn’t want to. Georgia O’Keeffe had been Thora’s patron saint. Allison’s first taste of feminism had come from Thora, and Allison was forever grateful she’d had someone so sweet to help her through those first harrowing days of puberty. Thora had been both a sister and a substitute mother to Allison, a crazy, wonderful woman who apparently still wore her hair in pigtails at the age of twenty-eight, and as she rocked Allison in her arms, both of them wept.

“Why are you back?” Thora whispered. “I never thought you’d come back.”

It wasn’t quite the greeting Allison expected, more stunned than happy.

“Roland asked me to,” Allison said. Thora pulled back and held her by the upper arms. Thora’s eyes were red-rimmed with tears as they searched Allison’s face.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Thora said. “When they told me you showed up last night, I just... I couldn’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Deacon said. “That’s her. I checked.”

“You really thought you’d never see me again?” Allison asked.

Thora glanced over at Deacon and then met Allison’s eyes again.

“You know, after all that happened,” Thora said.

“All in the past,” Allison said. Dr. Capello had hinted he’d prefer she not discuss Oliver with anyone. Even Thora.

“Good,” Thora said and hugged her again.

“Come on, Al. Enough hugging. I want to show you the hot shop,” Deacon said. He waved her through the small front room and then through an industrial-looking metal door. The second she stepped through the door, Allison was hit with a blast of heat.

“Wow, that’s hot,” she said, blinking. “I think my face melted.”

“You get used to it,” Deacon said as he stripped out of his leather jacket down to his sleeveless T-shirt.

“I thought the no-sleeves thing was because you like to show off your tattoos,” Allison said. “I see now it has a practical benefit.”

“No,” Thora said, coming in behind them. “It’s to show off the tattoos.”

Allison took off her own jacket. She’d already started sweating.

“Truth,” Deacon said, and Thora rolled her eyes. “This is the hot shop. Named because it is really hot.”

“How hot?” Allison asked.

“Ninety,” Thora said, glancing at a thermometer on the wall. “Ninety in the room. About a thousand in there.”

She pointed at a large round floor-to-ceiling oven.

“A thousand degrees?” Allison repeated.

“Fahrenheit,” Deacon said. “This is the crucible.” He opened the door to the oven and Allison saw an orange glow emanating from inside. “It’s the reason our electric bill is four thousand dollars a month.”

“You’re kidding,” Allison said.

“Good thing I make bank doing this,” Deacon said as he grabbed a long metal pole and twirled it in his hands.

“What are you doing with that pole?” Allison asked, suspicious.

“This is the pipe,” he said. “Not a pole. A pipe.”

“Pipe. Got it.”

“This—” he pointed at something that looked kind of like an open flame gas grill “—is the pipe warmer. The pipe is room temperature now, and we have to get it hot so the molten glass will stick to it.”

He put the end of the pipe in the pipe warmer and turned it rapidly.

“How heavy is that thing?”

“Oh...twenty pounds or so?”

“So this is how you got the Popeye forearms,” Allison said.

“You turn a twenty-pound steel pipe for hours every day for five years and you’ll get pretty good arms, too.”

“Don’t stroke his ego,” Thora said to her. “He’s already impossible to live with. Artists. Can’t live with them. Can’t stuff their bodies in the crucible.”

Allison laughed. The Twins were still the Twins, through and through.

“So, you run the shop?” Allison asked Thora as she took a seat far away from the action. The hot shop looked more like a mad scientist’s laboratory to her than an artist’s studio. Everywhere she looked, she saw large and dangerous equipment—steel pipes and blazing ovens, blowtorches and jars upon jars of color chips in every hue of the rainbow and then some.