“It’s so odd. She knew she was going to die soon. Because I knew. I asked her why, why did she do it? Why did she turn away from that last chance and end it all?”
“What did she say?”
“That if I could do anything for her, it would be to find that answer. That I had it all in front of me, but I wasn’t paying attention. So I woke up frustrated because, as she said, it’s my dream. If I know something, why don’t I know it?”
Ford took up his assignment of slicing the beefsteak. “Is it too much to accept she might’ve been too sad, too deep in the dark, and saw it as the only way to end the pain?”
“No. But I can’t quite make myself believe it. I never fully could, or never fully wanted to. And since I came here, started on the house, I believe it less-and want to believe it less,” Cilla admitted. “She found something here. Look at all she took and let go of again. Men, marriages, houses, possessions. She was famous for acquiring and disposing of. But she kept this place, and more, made arrangements so it would remain in the family long after she died. She found something she needed here, something that contented her.”
She looked out the window and watched Spock on his morning rounds. “She kept the dog,” Cilla murmured. “And an old jeep. A stove and refrigerator that were out of date. I think, in a way, this place was real to her. The rest, it’s not. For the smart ones, it’s a job. It’s good work. Fame can be a by-product, but it’s fleeting and fickle and so much of it’s an illusion. She didn’t need the illusion here.”
“And falling in love here made it more real?”
She looked over, grateful he followed the thread of her thoughts. “It follows, doesn’t it? The worst thing in her life happened here when Johnnie was killed. An inescapable reality. But she kept coming back, facing it. She didn’t close the place up, or sell it. He called her Trudy, and that’s who she wanted to believe he loved. I think she wanted that last chance, desperately. I think she wanted the baby, Ford. She’d lost one child. How could she, why would she kill herself and end the chance for another?”
“And if she realized it wasn’t Trudy this guy loved, that that was another illusion?”
“Men come and go. They always did for her. And I guess I remembered that, resolved that through the dream last night. Her one true love was Johnnie. Her work, too. She passionately loved the work. But Johnnie was hers. My mother always knew that, always knew she didn’t quite hit the same spot. The last love, the last chance? I think it was the child for her. I can’t believe, just can’t, that she’d have killed herself over a love affair that went south.”
“You said she was drinking in the dream. Vodka.”
“Her standard.” When the timer dinged, Cilla hefted the pot of pasta, carried it to the sink to drain into the waiting colander. “But there weren’t any pills in the dream.”
She stood, watching the steam rise. “Where were the pills, Ford? I keep circling back to those letters, to the anger in the last few. He didn’t want her in this house. She was a threat to him, an unpredictable woman, a desperate one, pregnant with his child. But she wouldn’t give it up. Not this place, not the child, not the chance. So he took it from her. I keep circling back to that.”
“If you’re right, proving it would be the next step. We’ve already tried to find out who wrote those letters. I don’t know how many more avenues there might be to take.”
“I feel like… I feel like we’ve already been down the right one, or close to it. And missed something that was right there. Right there. That I didn’t pay attention, and it slipped by.”
She turned. “This is my reality now, Ford. You, you and the farm, this life. I found that, I can take that because of her. I owe her. And I owe her more than planting roses and painting and hammering wood. More than bringing this place back as tribute. I owe her the truth.”
“What you’ve found, and what you take may have started with her. And if you need the truth, I’ll do whatever I can to help you find that. But the farm, what you’ve done here, it’s more than a tribute to Janet Hardy. It’s a tribute to you, Cilla. What you can do, what you’ll work for, what you’ll give. The walls were yours in the dream.”
“And I haven’t put anything inside it. I talk about it, but I don’t take the step. Not a chair, not a table, beyond what I needed for Steve. I guess I have to fix that.”
He’d been waiting for that. Waiting for that step. "I’ve got a house full of stuff here. It’s a good start for picking and choosing.”
She walked to him, linked her arms around his neck. “I pick you. I pick the guy who’ll slice tomatoes with me at seven in the morning because I’m a lunatic. The guy who not only promises to help me, but does. The one who makes me understand I’m the first Hardy woman in three generations lucky enough to be in love with a man who sees me. Let’s pick something, and take it across the road. We’ll put it inside the house so it’s not hers, it’s not mine. So it’s ours.”
“I vote for the bed.”
She grinned. “Sold.”
IT WAS RIDICULOUS, of course, for two people who were preparing for a party to leave the work to break down a bed, to haul frame, headboard, footboard, mattress, box spring, bedding downstairs, out to the truck, drive it across the road with a dog in tow. Then reverse the procedure.
But Cilla found it not only symbolic, she found it therapeutic.
Still, Ford’s suggestion that they try it out in its new place was going too far.
Tonight, she told him. Definitely.
Their room now, she thought, giving the pillows an extra fluff. Their room, their bed, their house. Their life.
Yes, she’d put pictures of Janet in the house, as she’d said in the dream. But there would be other pictures. Pictures of her and Ford, of friends and family. She’d ask her father if he had any of his parents, his grandparents she could copy. She’d repair and refinish the old rocker she’d found in the attic, and she’d buy cheerful, happy dishes, and put Ford’s wonderful roomy couch in their living room.
She’d remember what had been, and build toward what could be. Really, hadn’t that always been the purpose? And she’d keep looking for that truth. For Janet, for her mother, for herself.
At Ford’s she deserted the field, ducking outside to call Dilly in New York.
“Mom.”
“Cilla, it’s barely nine in the morning. Don’t you know I need my sleep? I have a show tonight.”
“I know. I read the reviews. ‘Mature and polished, Bedelia Hardy comes triumphantly into her own.’ Congratulations.”
“Well, I could’ve done without the mature.”
“I’m awfully proud of you, and looking forward to seeing you triumphant in D.C. in a couple of weeks.”
After a brief pause, Dilly said, “Thank you, Cilla. I don’t know what to say.”
And when her mother went on a long riff about the hard work, the three encores, the curtain calls, the acres of flowers in her dressing room, Cilla just smiled and listened. Dilly was never at a loss for words for long.
“Of course, I’m completely exhausted. But somehow, the energy’s there when I need it most. And Mario’s taking very good care of me.”
“I’m glad. Mom, Ford and I are getting married.”
“Who?”
“Ford, Mom. You met him when you came here.”
“I can hardly be expected to remember everyone I meet. The tall one? The neighbor?”
“He’s tall, and he lives across the road.”
“When did all this happen?” Dilly demanded, with the first notes of petulance in her voice. “Why are you marrying him? When you come back to L.A.-”
“Mom, just listen. Just listen and don’t say anything until I’m done. I’m not going back to L.A. I’m not coming back to the business.”