by Nora Roberts
“Hey. That was nice of you, Miss McGowan. It’s been quiet.”
“And a long night for both of you. It looks like the invaders have retired the field. I’m going to start work. Some of the crew will be coming along by seven.”
“It’s a nice spot you’ve got here.” The second cop pulled a glazed with sprinkles out of the box. “Heck of a bathroom up there on the second floor. My wife’s been wanting to update ours.”
“If you decide to, give me a call. Free consult.”
“Might do that. We’ll be going off shift pretty soon. Do you want us to call in and request another car?”
“I think we’ll be fine now. Thanks for looking out for me.”
Inside, she set up to finish her run of baseboard. By eight, the hive of activity buzzed. Grouting, drywall mudding, consults on driveway pavers and pond work. Turning her attention to the third bedroom, Cilla checked her closet measurements. As she removed the door, Matt stepped in.
“Cilla, I think you’d better take a look outside.”
“What? Is there a problem?”
“I guess you need to look, decide that for yourself.”
She propped the door against the wall, hustled after him. One look out the front window of the master bedroom had her gasping.
Six reporters had been a nuisance, and not unexpected. Sixty was a disaster.
“They just started showing up, kind of all at once,” Matt told her. “Kinda like there was a signal. Brian called me out, said some of them are yelling questions at his crew. Jesus, there’s TV cameras and everything.”
“Okay, okay, I need to think.” She had at least a dozen crew working between the house and the grounds. A dozen people she couldn’t possibly censor or control.
“There shouldn’t be this kind of interest in me being in a wreck, even with the circumstances. A few blips on the entertainment news maybe, reports locally. I need to make a call. Matt, if you could try to keep the men from talking to them, at least for now. I need a few minutes to . . .” She trailed off as the gleaming black limo streamed through her entrance.
“Man, look at that.”
“Yes, look at that,” Cilla echoed. She didn’t have to see Mario climb out of the back to know who’d arrived. Or why.
By the time Cilla reached the veranda, Bedelia Hardy stood under the supportive protection of her husband’s arm. She tilted her face out at the perfect angle, Cilla thought with burning resentment, so those long lenses could capture her poignant expression. She wore her hair loose so it shone in the sun over the linen jacket the same color as her eyes.
As Cilla let the screen door slam behind her, Dilly threw open her arms, keeping her body angled for the profile shots. “Baby!”
She came forward in rather spectacular Jimmy Choo sandals with three-inch heels. Trapped, Cilla walked down the steps in her work boots and into the maternal arms and clouds of Soir de Paris. Janet’s signature scent that had become her daughter’s.
“My baby, my baby.”
“You did this,” Cilla whispered in Dilly’s ear. “You leaked to the press you were coming.”
“Of course I did. All press is good press.” She leaned back, and through the amber lenses of Dilly’s sunglasses, Cilla saw the calculatedly misted eyes widen in genuine concern. “Oh, Cilla, your face. You said you weren’t hurt. Oh, Cilla.”
It was that, that moment of sincere shock and worry, Cilla supposed, that dulled the sharpest edge of resentment. “I got some bumps, that’s all.”
“What did the doctor say? Oh, that horrible man, that Hennessy. I remember him. Pinched-faced bastard. My God, Cilla, you’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, why don’t you at least put on some makeup? No time for that now, and it’s probably better this way. Let’s go. I’ve worked it all out. You’ll just follow my lead.”
“You sicced them on me, Mom. You know this is exactly what I didn’t want.”
“It’s not all about you, and what you want.” Dilly looked past Cilla to the house, then turned away. And again, Cilla saw genuine feeling. Pain. “It never has been. I need the column inches, the airtime. I need the exposure, and I’m going to take it. What happened, happened. Now you can let them keep pushing on that, on you, or you can help spin some of it, maybe most of it, around to me.
“Jesus! What is that?”
Cilla glanced down and saw Spock sitting patiently, paw out, big, bulbous eyes latched on to Dilly.
“That’s my neighbor’s dog. He wants you to shake.”
“He wants . . . Does it bite?”
“No. Just shake his paw, Mom. He’s decided you’re friendly because you hugged me.”
“All right.” She leaned over carefully and, to her credit, in Cilla’s mind, gave Spock’s paw a firm shake. Then smiled a little. “He’s so ugly, but in a weirdly sweet way. Shoo now.”
Dilly turned, her arm firm around Cilla’s waist, and flung out a hand to her husband. “Mario!”
He trotted up, took her hand, kissed it.
“We’re ready,” she told him.
“You look beautiful. Only a few minutes this time, darling. You shouldn’t be out in the sun too long.”
“Stay close.”
“Always.”
Clutching Cilla, Dilly began to move toward the entrance, toward the cameras.
“Great shoes,” Cilla complimented. “Poor choice for grass and gravel.”
“I know what—Who’s this? We can’t have reporters breaking ranks.”
“He’s not a reporter.” Cilla watched Ford shove through the lines. “Keep going,” she told him when he reached them. “You don’t want any part of this.”
“This would be your mother? It’s unexpected to meet you here, Miss Hardy.”
“Where else would I be when my daughter’s been hurt? The new love interest?” She scoped him head to toe. “I’ve heard a little about you. Not from you,” she said with a glance at Cilla. “We’ll have to talk. But now, just wait with Mario.”
“No. He’s no Mario, and he won’t be hanging back at heel like a trained lapdog. Don’t give them that, Ford.”
“I’m going to go in and get some coffee,” he decided. “Want me to call the cops while I’m at it?”
“No. But thanks.”
“Isn’t he all southern-fried and yummy,” Dilly commented as Ford continued toward the house. “Your taste’s improved.”
“I’m so angry with you now.” Indeed, the anger vibrated and pulsed inside her chest. “Be careful, very careful, what buttons you push.”
“You think this is easy for me, coming to this place? I’m doing what I need to do.” Dilly lifted her chin, the brave mother, supporting her injured child. Questions hurled out, but Dilly walked through them, a soldier stoically braving the front line.
“Please. Please.” She held up a hand, lifting her voice. “I understand your interest, and even on some level appreciate it. I know your viewers and your readers care, and that touches me. But you must understand that our family is, once again, going through a difficult time. And this is . . . painful. My daughter has been through a terrible experience. I’m here for her, as any mother would be.”
“Dilly! Dilly! When did you hear about Cilla’s accident?”
“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 shift 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 God, 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. Damn it, Cilla. Damn 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.”
“God, 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 glass, 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 supervillains 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 God 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 Coke 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 Wil lard. 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 assuaged 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 tit 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, b
ut 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.”