Tribute Part 41

"She called me as soon as she was able. No matter how grown up, a child still wants her mother when she's hurt. Even though she told me not to come, not to break off rehearsals for my cabaret act, not to expose myself to the grief and the memories this place holds for me, of course I came to her."

"You haven't been back, by your own statements, to this house since shortly after Janet Hardy's suicide. How does it feel, being here now?"

"I can't think of it. Not yet. My daughter is my only concern. Later, when we've had time to be together, in private, I'll explore those feelings. My mother ..." Her voice cracked, on cue. "My mother would want me to give my daughter, her granddaughter, all my energies."

"Cilla, what are your plans? Will you open the house to the public? There's speculation you hope to house memorabilia here."

"No. I plan to live here. I am living here," she corrected, cold, clear-voiced, while the temper beat and beat. "The property has been in my family, on both the Hardy and the McGowan sides, for generations. I'm restoring and remodeling it, and it will be, as it's always been, a private home."

"Is it true that you've been plagued by break-ins, by vandalism during your restoration?"

"There have been incidents. I don't consider them a plague."

"What do you say to the claims that Janet Hardy's spirit haunts the house?"

"My mother's spirit is here," Dilly said before Cilla could answer. "She loved her little farm, and I believe her spirit, her voice, her beauty and her grace remain. We're proof of that." Dilly drew Cilla closer. "Her spirit's in us. In me, in my daughter. And now, in some way, three generations of Hardy women are here. Now please, I need to get my daughter inside, where she can rest. I ask you, as a mother, to respect our privacy. If you have any more questions, my husband will try to answer them."

Tipping her head close to Cilla's, Dilly turned and walked with her toward the house.

"A little heavy on the mother card," Cilla told her.

"I don't think so. What happened to the tree?"

"What tree?"

"That one, with the red leaves. It was bigger. A lot bigger."

"It was damaged, dead and dying. I replaced it."

"It looks different. There were more flowers." Dilly's voice shook, but Cilla knew it was uncalculated this time. "Mama loved flowers."

"There will be more when it's done." Cilla felt the dynamic s.h.i.+ft with every step until she supported Dilly. "You've trapped yourself. You have to go inside now."

"I know it. The porch was white. Why isn't it white?"

"I had to replace most of it. It's not painted yet."

"The door's not right." Her breath quickened, as if they were running instead of walking. "That's not her door. Why is everything changed?"

"There was damage, there was mold and dry rot. My G.o.d, Mom, there's only been the very minimum of maintenance in the last decade, and not much more than that for twenty years before. You can't neglect without incurring damage."

"I didn't neglect it. I wanted to forget it. Now I can't, can I?"

Cilla felt her mother quiver, and would have soothed, but Dilly nudged her away as they walked inside.

"This is wrong. It's all wrong. Where are the walls? The little parlor? The paint's the wrong color."

"I made changes."

Eyes hot and gleaming, she whirled toward Cilla on her fabulous shoes. "You said you were restoring it."

"I said I was rehabbing it, and I am. I'm making it mine, and respecting what it was."

"I'd never have sold it to you if I'd known you'd tear it apart."

"Yes, you would," Cilla said coolly. "You wanted the money, and I want to live here. If you'd wanted it caught in amber, Mom, you had decades to do it. You don't love this house, it's a jagged edge for you. But I do love it."

"You don't know what I feel! I had more of her here than anywhere else. Second to Johnnie, of course, always second to her beloved son." Tears ripped through the words. "But I had more of her when we were here than anywhere. And now it's all changed."

"No, not all. I had the plaster repaired, and the floor will be refinished. The floors she walked on. I'm having the stove and refrigerator she used retrofitted, and I'll use them."

"That big old stove?"

"Yeah."

Dilly pressed her fingers to her lips. "She'd try to bake cookies sometimes. She was terrible at it. She'd always burn them, and laugh. We'd eat them anyway. d.a.m.n it, Cilla. d.a.m.n it. I loved her so much."

"I know you did."

"She was going to take me to Paris. Just the two of us. It was all planned. Then Johnnie died. He always did spoil everything for me."

"G.o.d, Mom."

"That's how I felt then. After the shock, and that first awful grief because I did love him. I did love him even when I wanted to hate him.

But after that, and when she wouldn't go to Paris, I thought, he's spoiled that for me." Dilly took a slow, hitching breath. "She loved him more dead than she did me alive. No matter how hard I ran, I could never catch up."

I know how you feel, Cilla thought. Just exactly. In her way, Dilly loved her mother dead more than she could love her daughter alive.

Maybe this was about redemption, too. So Cilla took another step. "I think she loved you very, very much. I think things got horribly twisted and broken the summer he died. And she never fully mended. If she'd had more time-"

"Why didn't she take it, then? She took the pills instead. She left me. She left me. Accident or not-and I'll always, always believe it was an accident-she took the pills, when she could've taken me."

"Mom." Moving to her, Cilla touched Dilly's cheek. "Why didn't you ever tell me that before? How you felt?"

"It's this house. It upsets me. It dredges everything up. I don't want it. I just don't want it." She opened her purse, took out a silver pill case. "Get me some water, Cilla. Bottled."

The irony, Cilla thought, would forever be lost on Dilly. The daughter who grieved because her mother chose pills over her, perpetuated the same behavior.

"All right."

In the kitchen, Cilla pulled a bottle of water out of her mini fridge. She got a gla.s.s, added ice. Dilly would have to live without her usual slice of lemon, she mused. Pouring the water, she glanced out.

Ford stood with Brian and her pond expert by the choked waters. He held a mug of coffee, and the thumb of his other hand was hooked through one of the belt loops of his jeans.

Long and lean, she thought, with just that hint of gawky. Messy brown hair with sun-kissed tips. So wonderfully, blessedly normal. It steadied her just to look at him, to know he'd stay-this man who created super-villains and heroes, who had every season of Battlestar Galactica -both series-on DVD. A man who, she was fairly certain, didn't know an Allen wrench from a Crescent, and trusted her to handle herself. Until he decided she couldn't.

"Thank G.o.d you're here," she murmured. "Wait for me."

She took the water back to her mother, so Dilly could wash down her tranquilizer du jour.

TWENTY-THREE So they're gone." Ford gestured toward the house with the c.o.ke he'd copped from Cilla's kitchen.

"Yes. After a finale of motherly embraces in view of the cameras".

"Back to California?"

"No, they're staying over in D.C. for the night, at the Willard. In that way, she can stage another couple of press ambushes, and get in the plug for her show at the National Theater in September." Cilla held up her hands, shook her head. "It's not entirely that calculating. Only about eighty percent was calculated. The remaining twenty was actual concern for me, which she'd have expressed and a.s.suaged on the phone if it hadn't been to her advantage to make the trip. It took a lot of need for her to come here, to this house. I didn't understand until today, or fully believe until today, how genuinely it upsets her. It makes it a little easier to forgive the neglect, and accept why she was so bitter when I made her an offer she couldn't refuse."

"And it doesn't enter into logical thinking that if she didn't want it, couldn't handle it, she could have given it to you?"

"Not in Dilly's world. It's t.i.t for tat. I didn't know how much she felt unloved at the end, or how completely she felt pushed into second place to her brother in Janet's heart. I'm not sure she's wrong. And yes, I know she did something today she knew I didn't want, and can justify doing it not only because it was to her advantage, but by convincing herself it was what was best for me. It's a talent of hers."

"She'll be an interesting mother-in-law."

"Oh, really." Panic teeth clamped on her throat. "Don't go there."

"Already through that garden gate and meandering up the walk. 'Meander' being the key for now," he said, lifting his c.o.ke for another sip. "No rush on it."

"Ford, you have to understand-"

"Cilla. Sorry," Matt added, stepping out. "Looks like the flooring for the third floor's coming in. Thought you'd want to take a look, check it out before we take it up."

"Yeah, yeah, I do. Be right there."

"Flooring already?" Ford asked her.

"It has to rest on site, a kind of acclimating, for a few days before installation. Since we're doing built-ins up there, the floor has to ... Never mind."

"Okay. If my services are no longer needed here, I'm going to go try to salvage some of my workday."

"Good. Good," she repeated, struggling against nerves.

"Oh, I finished scanning those photos for you. Remind me to give them to you."

"G.o.d, I'd forgotten all about them. I'll have to thank your grandfather."

"I think he considers it thanks enough that he got to see you in a towel."

"And thanks for that reminder." They came around front where the delivery truck slowly backed down her drive. "Hot dog!"

"I'll leave you to the thrill of your wood planks." He caught her face in his hands, kissed her. "We'll be waiting for you."

They would, she thought. He and his strange little dog would do just that. It was both wonderful and terrifying.

FORD LOCKED HIMSELF in his box for four straight hours. It rolled, and it rocked along. Even with all the distractions-s.e.xy neighbor, break-ins,a new friend in the hospital, worry about s.e.xy neighbor and falling in love with her-he was making excellent progress.

It occurred to him that Brid might be finished just about the same time Cilla's house was. That was some superior synchronicity. But now, he deserved to shut it down and indulge in some serious sitting-on-the-veranda time. He unlocked the box, stepped back to take a long, critical look at the day's work.

"You're d.a.m.n good, Sawyer. Don't let anybody tell you different."

With his back warm from the self-pat, he walked downstairs, stopping to look out the window. Not a reporter in sight, he noted, pleased for Cilla. No trucks in sight, either, which meant her day's work should be wrapped, too. He headed to the kitchen to get a cold one and to call Spock in from the backyard for the veranda-sitting, wait-for-Cilla portion of their day.

He found a note inside the fridge, taped to a beer.

Finished? If so, drop over to Chez McGowan.

Come around back.

He grinned at the note. "Don't mind if I do."

She sat on the slate patio, at a teak table under a bright blue umbrella. A trio of copper pots, filled to bursting with mixed plantings, cheered the three stairs of the veranda. With her ball cap on her head, her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles of her work boots, and roses rioting behind her, he thought she looked both relaxed and extraordinary.

She smiled-relaxed and easy-when he sat across from her. "I'm basking," she told him, and gave Spock a rub.

"I noticed. When did you get this?" He flicked a finger up at the umbrella.

"It came in today, and I couldn't resist setting it up. After I did, Shanna hauled over the planters. I picked them up on one of my sorties, and figured I'd get around to doing something with them, eventually. But she saw the table here, and ran out to the nursery, picked up the plants and did the job, just because. I'll have to move them when we do the exterior staining and painting, but I really love looking at them now."

She s.h.i.+fted, reached down and pulled two beers out of the ice in a drywall compound bucket. "And now, even better, you can bask with me."

He twisted off the tops, then clinked his bottle to hers. "To the first of many basks under blue umbrellas. I take it you had a good day."

"Ups and downs. It couldn't get worse than it started, though there were b.u.mps. My excitement over the flooring was short-lived when I discovered they'd delivered the wrong hardwood. Then claimed I'd called in to change the order from walnut to oak, which is just so much bulls.h.i.+t, and will delay the third-floor work schedule a full week. I did finish the closet in the third bedroom, and got a start on the one in the fourth. The vendor messed up the cut on a panel of the steam shower doors, which means a delay there, but the soaking tub I've had my eye on for the third bath, second floor, just went on sale. The insurance company is balking at giving me another loaner after getting hit with two claims in two days, and will surely raise my rates. I decided to bask instead of being p.i.s.sed."

"Good choice."

"Well, delays and glitches go with the territory. The roses are blooming, and I have a blue umbrella. So enough about me. How was your day?"

"Much better than average. I solved a major problem in the work, and it rolled from there. Then I found a very nice invitation in my refrigerator. "

"I figured you'd see it first thing, after you surfaced. I actually came upstairs first, but if I've ever seen anyone in the zone, you were." Curious, interested, she c.o.c.ked her head. "What was the problem solved?"

"The villain. Early version of him was Mr. Eckley, my tenth-grade algebra teacher. I'm telling you, the man was evil. But as the character developed, I knew I didn't have the right look-physically. I wanted leaner, a little meaner, yet handsome, maybe slightly aristocratic and dissipated. Everything I tried ended up looking like John Carradine or Basil Rathbone."

"Good looks, both. Hollowed cheeks, piercing eyes."

"And too obvious for the character. It kept bogging me down. Today I hit on it. I'm not looking for dissipation, cut cheekbones and intensity. I'm looking for a thin coat of polish and sophistication over a whole lotta smarm. Not the lean and bony Carradine, but something slighter, edging toward effete. The contrast between looks and intent," he explained. "Between image and purpose. It's a lot more evil when a guy coldly destroys while wearing an Armani suit."

"So you based him on a Hollywood agent?"