Not to steal. Digging them up would have taken a bit more time, a bit more trouble. To destroy. To kill.
The sheer meanness of the act twisted in her belly in a combination of sorrow and fury. Not a scavenger, she thought. Not kids. Kids bashed mailboxes along the road, so she’d been warned. Kids didn’t take the time to hack down a couple of ornamental trees.
She straightened to take a steadying breath, and looked over at the broken stump of one of her dying trees. That breath caught. Her body trembled, that same combination of sorrow and fury. Black paint defiled the old stone wall with its ugly message.
GO BACK TO HOLLYWOOD BITCH!
LIVE LIKE A WHORE DIE LIKE A WHORE
“Fuck you,” she said under her breath. “Goddamn it, Hennessy, fuck you.”
Riding on pure fury now, she stormed back to the house to call the police.
WITH BLOOD IN HER EYE, Cilla warned every one of the crew that anyone who mentioned the trees or the wall to Steve would be fired on the spot. No exceptions, no excuses.
She ordered Brian back to the nursery. She wanted two new trees planted, and she wanted them planted that very day.
By ten, when the cops had come and gone, secure that her threat would hold and that the crew would keep Steve busy inside, she went out to work with the mason on cleaning the stone.
Ford saw her, scrubbing at the stone, when he stepped out with his first cup of coffee. And he saw the message sprayed over the wall. As she had done earlier, he left his coffee on the rail and jogged down to her in bare feet.
“Cilla.”
“Don’t tell Steve. That’s the first thing. I don’t want you to say a word about this to Steve.”
“Did you call the cops?”
“They’ve been here. For whatever good it does. It has to be Hennessy, it has to be that son of a bitch. But unless he’s got black paint and wood chips under his goddamn fingernails, what are they going to do about it?”
“Wood…” He saw the stumps then, swore. “Wait a minute. Let me think.”
“I don’t have time. I have to get this off. Can’t risk sandblasting this stone. It’s too harsh. It’d damage the stone, the mortar, do as much harm, potentially, as the stupid paint. This chemical’s the best alternative. Probably have to have the wall repointed, but it’s all I can do.”
“Scrub at the stone with a brush?”
“That’s right.” She attacked the C in BITCH like she would a sworn enemy. “He’s not going to get away with this. He’s not going to soil or damage what’s mine. I wasn’t driving the goddamn car. I wasn’t even born, for Christ’s sake.”
“And he’s eighty if he’s a day. I have a hard time seeing him chopping down a couple of trees and tagging a stone wall in the middle of the night.”
“Who else?” She rounded on Ford. “Who else hates me or this place the way he does?”
“I don’t know. But we’d better work on finding out.”
“It’s my problem.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“It’s my problem, my wall, my trees. I’m the bitch.”
He met her hot glare with a cool stare. “I wouldn’t argue with the last part right at the moment, but as for the rest? Bullshit. You don’t want to tell Steve, fine. I get it. But I’m not leaving. I’m not heading back to L.A. or anywhere else.”
He grabbed her arm, pulled her back around to face him. “I’m staying right here. Deal with it.”
“I’m trying to deal with this, and with having my best friend leave when he can hardly walk more than five yards at a time. I’m trying to deal with making a life I didn’t even realize I wanted until a few months ago. I don’t know how much more I can deal with.”
“You’ll have to make room.” He cupped her face, kissed her hard. “Got another brush?”
FIFTEEN
Cilla sweated over the long, tedious process most of the day, with breaks to handle scheduled work. She concentrated on the ob-scenities first as people slowed on the drive by, or stopped altogether to comment or question.
Sometime during the process, the burning edge of her rage banked down to simple frustration. Why had the asshole written so damn much?
She picked up the task again the next morning, before the mason or any of the crew arrived. Two new trees flanked her entrance. She thought of them as defiant now rather than sweet. And that pumped up her energy.
“Hey.”
She glanced around to see Ford, ratty sweatpants and T-shirt, standing on the opposite shoulder of the road with a red bandanna-sporting Spock quivering, but sitting obediently at his feet. “Early for you,” she responded.
“I set the alarm. It must be love. Come over here a minute.”
“Busy.”
“When aren’t you? Honey, you can wear me out just watching. Come on, take a minute. I got coffee.” He held up one of the oversized mugs he carried.
He’d set the alarm, and though she didn’t know quite what to think about that, she owed him for it. And for the time he’d put in the day before, even after she’d been rude and snarly. She set the bristle brush down, crossed the road.
He handed her the coffee, gestured to the wall as she greeted Spock. “Read it from here. Out loud.”
She shrugged, turned, and even as she took a gulp of the coffee felt a little bubble of amusement rise in her throat. “Go to Hollywood, live like an ore ike.”
“Ore-ike,” he mused. “I can use that. Seems to me he tried to hurt and intimidate you, and you’ve made him a joke. Nicely done.”
“Unexpectedly ridiculous. I guess that’s a plus. I’ve nearly run out of mad. You don’t have to get into this again today, Ford. How are you going to make me a warrior goddess if you’re scrubbing off graffiti?”
“That’s cruising along pretty well. I can give you a couple of hours before I get back to it. Spock’s looking forward to being what Brian and Matt call a job dog today. He’s just going to go over and hang out with the guys. Hence the bandanna.”
“You know, I’m probably going to have sex with you, without the offer of manual labor.”
“I’m hoping.” He gave her an easy, uncomplicated smile. “You know I’d offer the labor even if you weren’t going to have sex with me.”
She took a contemplative sip of coffee. “I guess that evens it out. I do better on even ground. Well.” She started back across the street, and he and Spock fell into step beside her. “My father heard about this, called me last night. What could he do? How could he help? Why didn’t I come stay there for a while, until the police figured it out? Which is looking like, hmm, never. Then my stepmother got on the phone. She wants to take me shopping.”
“For a new wall? This one’s cleaning up okay.”
“No, not a new wall.” She gave him a light punch, then handed him protective gloves. “Patty, Angie and Cilla do the outlets. Like trolling for bargains would solve my problem.”
“I take it you’re not going?”
“I don’t have the time or the inclination to search out peek-toe pumps or a flirty summer dress.”
“Red shoes, white dress. Sorry,” he added at her quiet stare. “I think in visuals.”
“Uh-huh. The point, I guess, is that I’m not used to people offering- time or company or help-without any number of strings attached.”
“That’s a shame, or perhaps living like an ore-ike.”
She laughed, began to scrub.
"Go play,” he told Spock, who trotted off toward the house in his red bandanna.
“I’m trying to learn to accept the offers without the lingering haze of cynicism. It’s going to take a little while.”
He worked for a few moments in silence. “You know what I see when I look over here?”
“Trucks, big-ass Dumpster, a house in desperate need of paint?”
“Sleeping Beauty’s castle.”
“How? Where? Why?”
“First, I risk impinging my manhood by admitting I dug on those kind of stories as a kid, as much as I did the Dark Knight, X-Men, and so on. And consider Disney’s version solid, with Maleficent one of the top villains of all time. Anyway.”