Page 1 (1/2)

The past cannot be presented;

we cannot knoe are not

But one veil hangs over the past,

present, and future

- HENRY DAVID THOREAU

ONE

According to legend, Steve McQueen once swa the cattails and lily pads in the pond at the Little Far of Cool had stripped off and dived in post The Magnificent Seven and prior to The Great Escape

In soend, Steve had done inia -and he’d done the h they’d both been end carrieddead, neither could confirht as she studied the murky water of the lily-choked pond, neither had bothered-as far as she could ascertain-to confirm or deny while they’d had the chance

True or false, she iic, the brilliant, the troubled, had enjoyed the buzz Even icons had to get their kicks solare of sun with the dulling bite of March chilling her face, Cilla could see it perfectly The steaardens would’ve been at their rance The water would’ve been so cool and silky on the skin, and the color of chalossy pearls

Janet would have been at her stunning peak as well, Cillaover white shoulders No, those would have been spun-gold, too, from her summer tan Gilded shoulders in the tea-colored water, and her Arctic-blue eyes bright with laughter-andand sparkling through the dark, like the fireflies that flashed over the fertile fields, the velvet lawns, Cilla iuests andered over the lawns, the porches and patios as bright as the leamed overhead like little jewels scattered away fro colored lights from lanterns

Yes, it would’ve been like that Janet’s world had been one of brilliant light and utter dark Always

Cilla hoped she dove into that pond unapologetically naked, drunk and foolish and happy And utterly unaware her crowded, desperate, glorious life would end barely a decade later

Before turning away from the pond, Cilla listed it in her thick notebook It would need to be cleaned, tested and ecologically balanced She ement and maintenance before she atteardens Or as left of therass Weeds, literal blankets of vines, overgrown shrubs with branches poking through the blankets like brown bones, marred what had once been siht and beautiful choked off and buried in the grasping

She’d need help with this part, she decided Considerable help However et her hands into it, she couldn’t possibly clear and hack, slash and burn, and redesign on her own

The budget would have to include a landscaping crew She noted down the need to study old photographs of the gardens, to buy so to educate herself, and to contact local landscapers for bids

Standing, she scanned the ruined lawns, the sagging fences, the sad old barn that stood soot gray and scarred from weather There had been chickens once-or so she’d been told-a couple of pretty horses, tidy fields of crops, a srove of fruit trees She wanted to believe- all that back That by the next spring, and all the springs after, she could stand here and look at all the budding, the bloorandmother’s

Of as now hers

She saas, and how it once had been through her own Arctic-blue eyes shaded by the bill of a Rock the House ball cap Her hair, h the back of the cap in a long,shoulders and a long torso, faded jeans over long legs, and boots she’d bought years before for a hiking trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains The sao, she thought The last time she’d come east, come here And when, she supposed, the seeds for what she would do now had been planted

Didn’t that lect at least partially her doing? She could’ve pushed sooner, could have de it now," she reret the delay any un over the property

"Yours now, Cilla," she told herself "Don’t screw it up"

She turned, braced herself, then rass and brambles to the old far parties, or had escaped to between roles And where, in 1973, on another steaend

THERE WERE GHOSTS Sensing the the rari disrepair Ghosts, Cilla supposed, had kept the vandalisht, had their uses

She’d had the electricity turned back on, and had brought plenty of lightbulbs along hat she hoped would be enough cleaning supplies to get her started She’d applied for her permits and researched local contractors

Now, it was ti up her priorities, she tackled the first of the four bathrooms that hadn’t seen a scrub brush in the last six years

And she suspected the last tenants hadn’t bothered over their stint

"Could be ," she muttered as she scraped and scrubbed "Could be snakes and rats And God, shut up You’re asking for the countless buckets of filthy water, she thought she could risk using the facilities without being inoculated first Chugging bottled water, she headed down the back stairs to have a whack at the big far the baby-blue-on-white laminate on the stubby counters, she wondered whose idea that update had been, and why they’d assumed it would suit the e and Coldspot refrigerator

Aesthetically, the room was over the line of hideous, but sanitary had to take precedence

She braced the back door open for ventilation, tugged rubber gloves back on and very gingerly opened the oven door

"Oh, crap"

While the best part of a can of oven cleaner went to work, she tackled the oven racks, the burners, the stove top and hood A photograph flitted through her meht hair pulled back in a sassy tail, stirring so at the caly

Publicity shoot, Cilla reazines Redbook or McCall’s The old farrill, had sparkled like new hope It would again, she vowed One day, she’d stir a pot on that sarandmother

She started to squat down to check the oven cleaner, then yipped in surprise when she heard her na his silvered blond hair His smile deepened the creases in his face, still so handsome, and warmed those quiet hazel eyes

Her heart took a bound from surprise to pleasure, and another into e for a hug, she tossed up her hands, wheeled back "No, don’t I’ Covered with I don’t even want to know" She swiped the back of her wrist over her forehead, then fuloves "Dad," she repeated

"I see a clean spot" He lifted her chin with his hand, kissed her cheek "Look at you"

"I wish you wouldn’t" But she laughed ashere?"

"Sonized you in tohen you stopped for supplies and said so to his wife, "called oing to Ito call you"At soured out what to say "I just wanted to get here first, then I" She glanced back at the oven "I got caught up"

"So I see When did you get in?"

Guilt pricked her conscience "Listen, let’s go out on the front porch It’s not too bad out front, and I have a cooler sitting out there holding a cold-cut sub with our names on it Just let me wash up, then we’ll catch up"

It wasn’t as bad in front, Cilla thought when she settled on the sagging steps with her father, but it was bad enough The overgroeedy lawn and gardens, the trio of ht ht be wisteria could all be dealt with Would be But the wonderful old lossy leaves, and stubborn daffodils shoved up through the thorny ar the stone walls

"I’an as she handed her father a bottle of iced tea to go with half the sub "I’m sorry I haven’t called"

He patted her knee, opened her bottle, then his own

It was so like hiood, the bad, the mediocre How he’d ever fallen for the emotional o, Cilla mused, and far away

She bit into her portion of the sub "I’h

"Lizzie Borden"

"Second worst How’s your mother?"

Cilla bit into her sub, rolled her eyes "Lizzy’s definitely running behind me on Mom’s scale at thetogether a cabaret act for her" At her father’s quiet look, Cilla shrugged "I think when yournumbers to husbands is practical and efficient He’s okay Better than Numbers Four and Two, and considerably smarter than Nu here sharing a sub with the never-to-be- and dance together requires money I had some money"

"Cilla"

"Wait, wait I had so I wanted I wanted this place, Dad I’ve wanted it for a while now"

"You-"

"Yeah, I bought the farhed

"And she’s so pissed at me She didn’t want it, God knows I mean, look at it She hasn’t been out here in years, in decades, and she fired every ive it to o She wouldn’t sell it toit now "I got the tragedy face, the spiel about Janet But now she needed seedfight, much drama I told her, and Number Five, I’d buy this place, named an amount and made it clear that was firm"

"She sold it to you She sold you the Little Far, various sorrowful opinions on hterly behavior since the day I was born And so on It doesn’t ht "She didn’t want it; I did She’d have sold it long before this if it hadn’t been tied up in trusts It could only be sold and transferred to family until, what, 2012? Anyway, Nuot what they wanted"

"What are you going to do with it, Cilla?"

Live, she thought Breathe "Do you remember it, Dad? I’ve only seen the pictures and old home rounds were gorgeous and the porches glearace That’s what I’ it back"