“Now, I am sorry. How did I take such a morbid turn?”
“Old houses. They’re full of life and death.”
“I suppose you’re right. It’s about life now, isn’t it, and what you’re doing here. Oh, I completely forgot. I brought you two mimosas.”
“You brought me drinks?”
Cathy laughed until she had to hold her stomach. “No. Trees. Well, they will be trees in a few years, if you want them. I started a couple dozen of them from seed, to give as gifts. I have a pair of lovely old mimosas. You may not want to bother with them, and I won’t be offended if you don’t. They’re barely ten inches high at this point, and you won’t see blooms for several years.”
“I’d love to have them.”
“They’re out on your veranda in some old plastic pots. Why don’t we take them around to Brian, see where he thinks they’d do best for you?”
“They’re my first housewarming gift.” Cilla led the way out, and picked up one of the black plastic pots holding the delicate, fanning seedling. “I love the idea of planting them so young, and being able to watch them grow, year after year. It’s funny, you coming by, talking about the parties. I was thinking about having one, maybe for Labor Day.”
“Oh, you should! What fun.”
“Problem being, the house won’t be completely finished, and I won’t have it furnished or decorated, or-”
“Who cares about that!” Obviously already in the swing, Cathy gave Cilla an elbow bump. “You can have another when you’re all done. It’d be like… a prelude. I’d be happy to help, and you know Patty would. Ford’s mother, too. In fact, we’d take over if you didn’t whip us back.”
“Maybe. Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
AFTER THE CREWS HAD GONE, and the house fell silent, after two fragile seedlings with their pink, powder-puff blossoms still years from bloom had been planted in a sunny spot bordering the yard and fallow field, Cilla sat on an overturned bucket in the living room of the house that had once been her grandmother’s. The house now hers.
She imagined it crowded with people, beautifully dressed, beautifully coiffed. The colored lights of Christmas, the elegance of candle and firelight glowing, glittering, glimmering.
A lipstick-pink couch with white satin pillows.
And Janet, a light brighter than all the rest, gliding from guest to guest in elegant blue, a crystal glass bubbling with champagne in her hand.
The granddaughter sat on the overturned bucket, hearing the dream voices and drawing in the ghost scents of Christmas pine.
Ford found her, alone in the center of the room, in light going dim with the late summer evening.
Too alone, he thought. Not just solitary, not this time. Not quietly contemplative, and not basking, but absolutely alone, and very, very away.
Because he wanted her back, he walked over, crouched in front of her. Those spectacular eyes stared for another instant, two more, at what was away, then came back, came back to him.
“There was a Christmas party,” she said. “It must have been the last Christmas party she gave, because it was the Christmas before Johnnie was killed. There were lights and music, crowds of people. Beautiful people. Canapés and champagne. She sang for them, with Lenny Eisner on the piano. She had a pink couch. A long, bright pink couch with white satin pillows. Cathy told me about it. It sounds so Doris Day, doesn’t it? Bright pink, lipstick pink. It would never go in here now, that bright pink with these foggy green walls.”
“It’s just paint, Cilla; it’s just fabric.”
“It’s statements. Fashions change, go in and out, but there are statements. I’d never be a pink couch with white satin pillows. I changed it, and I’m not sorry about that. It’ll never be as elegant or bold and bright as it was, with her. I’m okay with that, too. But sometimes, when it’s me in here, I need-and I know this sounds completely insane-but I need to ask her if she’s okay with it, too.”
“Is she?”
She smiled, laid her brow against his. “She’s thinking about it.” She sat back, sighed. “Well, since I’m making crazy statements, I might as well lead up to asking you a crazy question.”
“Let’s sit outside on the crazy-question section of the veranda. There’s too damn much of me to squat down this way for long.” He pulled her to her feet.
They sat on the veranda steps, legs stretched out, with Spock wandering the front yard. “You’re sure this is the crazy-question section?”
“I have season tickets.”
“Okay. Did you know Brian’s grandfather? His father’s father?”
“Barely. He died when we were just kids. I have more of an impression of him. Big, strapping guy. Powerful.”
“He’d have been about, what, sixty that Christmas? That last Christmas party.”
“I don’t know. About, I guess. Why?”
“Not too old,” Cilla considered. “Janet liked older men, and younger, and just about any age, race or creed.”
“You’re thinking Bri’s grandfather and Janet Hardy?” His laugh was surprise and wonder. “That’s just… weird.”
“Why?”
“Okay, imagining grandparents having affairs, which means imagining grandparents having sex, is weird to begin with.”
“Not so much when your grandmother is forever thirty-nine.”
“Point.”
“Besides, grandparents have sex. They’re entitled to have sex.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to fix the image in my head, or the next thing I’ll be imagining my grandparents doing it, and see? See?” He gave her a mock punch on the arm. “There it is, in HDTV, in my head. Now I’m scarred for life. Thanks very much.”
“Yes, definitely the crazy section of the veranda. Ford, he could’ve written the letters.”
“My grandfather?”
“No. Well, yes, actually, now that you mention it. He had a crush on her, by his own admission. He took all those photographs of her.”
Ford simply dropped his head in his hands. “It’s a terrible, terrible series of images you’re putting in my brain.”
“Would he tell you if you asked?”
“I don’t know, and I’m not going to ask. Not in any lifetime. And I’m moving out of the crazy section of the veranda.”
“Wait, wait. We’ll switch grandfathers. Brian’s. It’s hard to see yours holding so fondly on to all those photos if their affair ended so badly. But Brian’s was the type, wasn’t he? Powerful, important. Married. Married with a family, a successful-and public-career. He could’ve written those letters.”
“Seeing as he’s been dead for about a quarter century, it’d be hard to prove either way.”
It was an obstacle, she thought, but didn’t have to be insurmountable. “There are probably samples of his handwriting somewhere.”
“Yeah.” Ford let out a sigh. “Yeah.”
“If I could get a sample, and compare it to the letters, then I’d know. They’re both gone, and it could end there. There wouldn’t be any point in letting it get out. But…”
“You’d know.”
“I’d know, and I could put away that part of her life that I never expected to find.”
“If they don’t match?”
“I guess I’ll keep hoping I’ll ask the right question of the right person one day.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
IT TOOK FORD a couple of days to figure out an approach. He couldn’t lie. Not that he was incapable of it; he was just so freaking bad at it. The only way he’d ever gotten away with a lie had been when the person being lied to felt pity for him and let it slide. He’d learned to sink or swim in the truth.
He watched Brian and Shanna turning a load of peat moss into the soil behind the completed stone wall.
“You could get a shovel,” Brian told him.
“I could, but there is also value in the watching and admiring. Especially in the watching and admiring of Shanna’s ass.”
She wiggled it obligingly.
“We all know you’re watching my ass,” Brian shot back.