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She had a couple of good, productive days She’d lined up her plumber, her electrician, her head carpenter, and had the first of three projected estimates on replace, had been connecting with an ancient little randson Jack, ould save and restore the original plaster walls

"Old man McGowan hired my daddy to do these walls back around 1922," Dobby told Cilla as he stood on his short, bowed legs in the living room of the little farm "I was about six, ca house before"

"It’s good work"

"He took pride in it, taughtup, and replastering where she es That’d be back around, ’sixty-five, I guess"

Dobby’s face reminded Cilla of a piece of thin brown paper that had been balled tight, then carelessly smoothed out The creases deepened like valleys when he sel Had a say about her, and didn’t put on airs like you’d reckon a ned one of her record albuumption to ask her My ouldn’t let me play it after that Had to frame it up for the wall, and buy a new one to listen to It’s still hanging in the parlor"

"I’"

"Not hard to find, I expect Lot of people, in Miz Hardy’s day, and with her ithal, woulda put up the Sheetrock" He turned his deep brown eyes on Cilla "Most people’d do that now instead of preserving it"

"I can’t save it all, Mr Dobby Soo But what I can save, I intend to" She ran a fingertip along a long crack in the living room wall "I think the house deserves that kind of respect from me"

"Respect" He nodded, obviously pleased "That’s a fine way to look at it It’s right fitting to have a McGowan here again, and one who coood work for you"

"I’m sure you will"

They shook hands on it, there where she irandfather And where Janet Hardy had signed an album that would stand in a frame

She spent a few hours off site with a local cabinetmaker Respect was io She planned to strip some of them down, repaint them and put them to use in the coned

When she got hoain, she found the open bottle of cabernet topped with a goofy, alien head glow-in-the-dark wine stopper, and a corkscrew sitting on the temporary boards at her front door

The note under the bottle read:

Sorry I didn’t get this back to you sooner, but Spock chained me to my desk Recently escaped, and you weren’t home Somebody could drink all this selfishly by herself, or ask a thirsty neighbor to join her one of these nights

Ford

Ahts Glancing back, she felt a little poke of disappoint out on his porch-veranda, she corrected And the poke warned her to be careful about sharing a bottle of ith hot guys who lived across the road

Considering that, considering hiht Wouldn’t it be nice to have that sort of space, that sort of light, for an office? If she pushed through with her long-ter houses, she’d need an attractive and efficient home office space

The bedroom she’d earmarked for the purpose on the second floor would certainly do the job But i Ford’s studio as she set the wine down on the old kitchen counter (slated for demo the next day), her projected office came off small, cramped and barely adequate

She could take out the wall between the second and third bedrooht, the look she now i the first floor, she repositioned, projected, considered It could be done, she thought, but she didn’t want her office space on the main level She didn’t want to live at work, so to speak Not for the long term Besides, if she hadn’t seen Ford’s fabulous studio, she’d have been perfectly content with the refit bedroom

And later, if her business actually took off, she could add a breezeway off the south side, then

"Wait a minute"

She hustled up the stairs, down the hall to the attic door It groaned in cranky protest when she opened it, but the bare bulb at the top of the steep, narrow stairs blinked on when she hit the switch

One look at the dusty steps had her backtracking for her notebook, and a flashlight, just in case

Clean attic Install new light fixtures

She headed up, pulled the chain on the first of three hanging bulbs

"Oh yeah Noe’re talking"

It was a long, wide, sloped-roof mess of dust and spiderwebs And loaded, to her h she’d had it lower than low on her priority list for cleaning and repair, the lightbulb was on in her head as well as over it

The space was huge, the exposed rafter ceiling high enough for her to stand with room to spare until it pitched down at the sides At the y s on either end, but that could change Would change

Boxes, chests, a scarred dresser, old furniture, old pole lahosts Books, probably full of silverfish, and old record albums likely warped from decades of summer heat jammed an old open bookcase

She’d conated the attic to So quickly Sort the wheat fro the stairwell and the stairs up to code Enlargeopenings Outdoor entrance-and that meant outdoor stairs, with maybe an atrium-style door Insulate, sand and seal the rafters and leave the, too, because there was plenty of roohts

Oh boy, oh boy She’d just added a ton to her budget

But wouldn’t it be fun?

Sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor, she spent a happy hour drawing out various options and ideas

How randfather’s? Had he, or his daughter or son, actually used the old white bowl and pitcher for washing up? Or sat and rocked a fretful baby in the spindly rocker?

Who read the books, listened to the music, hauled up the boxes in which she discovered a rat’s nest of Christhts with fat, old-fashioned colored bulbs?

Toss, donate or keep, she mused She’d have to start piles More boxes revealed ined so out of them She found three old toasters with cords frayed and possibly gnawed on by mice, broken porcelain las

She bu four traps, mercifully uninhabited Curious, and since she was already filthy, she squatted down to pull out soeable

Who read Zane Grey? she wondered Who enjoyed Frank Yerby and Mary Stewart? She piled thehs, Dashiell Haalls Wilder

She started to pull out a copy of The Great Gatsby, and her fingers depressed the sides Fearing the pages inside had simply deteriorated, she opened it carefully Inside, in a depression fraes, sat a stack of letters tied with a faded red ribbon

"Trudy Hamilton," Cilla read "Oh my God"

She sat with the open book on her lap, her palertips pressed to her lips Letters to her grandmother, sent to a name Janet hadn’t used since childhood

The address on the top envelope was a post office box in Malibu And the postled it toward the light

"Front Royal, Virginia, January 1972" A year and a half before she died, Cilla thought

Love letters What else could they be, tied with a ribbon, hidden away? A secret of a woman who’d been allowed precious few under the microscope of fame, and surely concealed by her own hands before, like Gatsby, she died young, tragically

Ro it, Cilla told herself They could be chatty letters from an old friend, a distant relative

But they weren’t She knew they weren’t Laying them back in the book, she closed it and carried it downstairs

She showered first, knowing she didn’t dare handle the treasure she’d unearthed until she’d scrubbed off the attic dirt

Scrubbed, dressed in flannel pants and a sweatshirt, her wet hair pulled back, she poured a glass of Ford’s wine Standing in the hard fluorescent light-and boy, did that have to go-she sipped the wine, stared at the book

The letters were hers now, Cilla had no qualree-and loudly She’d weep about her loss, her right to anything that had been Janet’s Then she’d sell them, auction them off as she had so many of Janet’s possessions over the years

For posterity, Dilly would claim For the public who adored her But that was so ht It would be for the low of fa the stack of letters, her eyes sheened with tears, with inserts of her and Janet

But she’d believe her own spin, Cilla thought That was one of Dilly’s finest skills, as innate as her ability to call up those tear-sheened eyes on cue

What should be done with theain, returned to sender? Fra in the parlor?

"Have to read them first"

Cilla blew out a breath, set the wine aside, then dragged a stool to the counter With great care, she untied the faded ribbon, then slipped the top letter out of its envelope The paper whispered as she unfolded it Dark, clear handwriting filled two pages