Tribute

Mom.”
    “That’s how I felt then. After the shock, and that first awful grief because I did love him. I did love him even when I wanted to hate him.
    But after that, and when she wouldn’t go to Paris, I thought, he’s spoiled that for me.” Dilly took a slow, hitching breath. “She loved him more dead than she did me alive. No matter how hard I ran, I could never catch up.”
    I know how you feel, Cilla thought. Just exactly. In her way, Dilly loved her mother dead more than she could love her daughter alive.
    Maybe this was about redemption, too. So Cilla took another step. “I think she loved you very, very much. I think things got horribly twisted and broken the summer he died. And she never fully mended. If she’d had more time—”
    “Why didn’t she take it, then? She took the pills instead. She left me. She left me. Accident or not—and I’ll always, always believe it was an accident—she took the pills, when she could’ve taken me.”
    “Mom.” Moving to her, Cilla touched Dilly’s cheek. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that before? How you felt?”
    “It’s this house. It upsets me. It dredges everything up. I don’t want it. I just don’t want it.” She opened her purse, took out a silver pill case. “Get me some water, Cilla. Bottled.”
    The irony, Cilla thought, would forever be lost on Dilly. The daughter who grieved because her mother chose pills over her, perpetuated the same behavior.
    “All right.”
    In the kitchen, Cilla pulled a bottle of water out of her mini fridge. She got a glass, added ice. Dilly would have to live without her usual slice of lemon, she mused. Pouring the water, she glanced out.
    Ford stood with Brian and her pond expert by the choked waters. He held a mug of coffee, and the thumb of his other hand was hooked through one of the belt loops of his jeans.
    Long and lean, she thought, with just that hint of gawky. Messy brown hair with sun-kissed tips. So wonderfully, blessedly normal. It steadied her just to look at him, to know he’d stay—this man who created super-villains and heroes, who had every season of Battlestar Galactica —both series—on DVD. A man who, she was fairly certain, didn’t know an Allen wrench from a Crescent, and trusted her to handle herself. Until he decided she couldn’t.
    “Thank God you’re here,” she murmured. “Wait for me.”
    She took the water back to her mother, so Dilly could wash down her tranquilizer du jour.

TWENTY-THREE
    S o they’re gone.” Ford gestured toward the house with the Coke he’d copped from Cilla’s kitchen.
    "Yes. After a finale of motherly embraces in view of the cameras".
    "Back to California?”
    "No, they’re staying over in D.C. for the night, at the Willard. In that way, she can stage another couple of press ambushes, and get in the plug for her show at the National Theater in September.” Cilla held up her hands, shook her head. “It’s not entirely that calculating. Only about eighty percent was calculated. The remaining twenty was actual concern for me, which she’d have expressed and assuaged on the phone if it hadn’t been to her advantage to make the trip. It took a lot of need for her to come here, to this house. I didn’t understand until today, or fully believe until today, how genuinely it upsets her. It makes it a little easier to forgive the neglect, and accept why she was so bitter when I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”
    “And it doesn’t enter into logical thinking that if she didn’t want it, couldn’t handle it, she could have given it to you?”
    “Not in Dilly’s world. It’s tit for tat. I didn’t know how much she felt unloved at the end, or how completely she felt pushed into second place to her brother in Janet’s heart. I’m not sure she’s wrong. And yes, I know she did something today she knew I didn’t want, and can justify doing it not only because it was to her advantage, but by convincing herself it was what was best for me. It’s a talent of hers.”
    “She’ll be an interesting mother-in-law.”
    “Oh, really.” Panic teeth clamped on her throat. “Don’t go there.”
    “Already through that garden gate and meandering up the walk. ‘Meander’ being the key for now,” he said, lifting his Coke for another sip. “No rush on it.”
    “Ford, you have to understand—”
    “Cilla. Sorry,” Matt added, stepping out. “Looks like the flooring for the third floor’s coming in. Thought you’d want to take