Tribute

questions. First, just to get it off my mind, why are you drowning the corn?”
    “My mother said to.”
    “Okay. If I thought of something, how do you know it’s something you’d want?”
    “If I didn’t,” he said, picking up the conversation as if there had been no break, “I know how to say I don’t want that. I learned how to do that at an early age, with mixed results. But the odds are, if we’re talking about construction and design, whatever you thought of would work.”
    “Next. Could I hurt you?”
    “Cilla, you could rip my heart out in bloody pieces.”
    She understood that, understood he could do the same to her. And wasn’t that a hell of a thing? Wasn’t that a miracle? “I couldn’t have done that to Steve, or him to me. As much as we loved each other. As much as we still do.”
    “Cilla—”
    “Wait. One more question. Did you ask me to carry the ring around with me because you hoped it would act as kryptonite, and weaken me over time until I agreed to marry you?”
    He shifted his feet, took another drink of wine. “It might have been a factor.”
    With a nod, she drew her hand out of her pocket, studied the ring sparkling on it. "Apparently, it works.”
    His grin flashed, quicksilver delight. But when he moved to her, she slapped a hand on his chest. “Just hold on.”
    “That was my plan.”
    “Wait. Wait,” she said again, softly. “Everything I said before, it’s true. I’d made up my mind never to get married again. Why go through the process when the odds are so stacked for failure? I failed a lot. Some was my fault, some was just the way it was. Marriage seemed so unnecessary, so hard, so full of tangles that can never really be fully unknotted. It was easy with Steve. We were friends, and we’d always be friends. As much as I love him, it was never hard or scary. There wasn’t any risk, for either of us.”
    Her throat filled, so much emotion rising up. But she wanted— needed—to get the rest out. “It’s not like that with you because we’re going to hurt each other along the way. If this screws up, we won’t be friends. If this screws up, I’ll hate you every day for the rest of my life.”
    “I’ll hate you more.”
    “Why is that absolutely the best thing you could’ve said? We’re not going to Vegas.”
    “Okay, but I think we’re missing a real opportunity. How do you feel about backyard weddings?”
    “I feel that’s what you had in mind all along.”
    “You’re what I had in mind all along.”
    She shook her head, then laid her hands on his cheeks. “I’d love a backyard wedding. I’d love to share this house with you. I don’t know how anything that scares me this much can make me so happy.”
    He took her lips with his, soft, soft, spinning the kiss out in the perfumed air, with the sun streaming through the trees. “I believe in us.” He kissed her again, swayed with her. “You’re the one I can dance with.”
    She laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes.
    THE LITTLE FARM
1973
    “I believed in love,” Janet said as she sat back on the white silk pillows on the lipstick-pink couch. “Why else would I have thrown myself into it so often? It never lasted, and my heart would break, or close. But I never stopped opening it again. Again and again. You know that. You’ve read all the books, heard all the stories, and the letters. You have the letters so you know I loved, right to the end.”
    “It never made you happy. Not the kind that lasted.” Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Cilla sorted through photographs. “Here’s one taken the day you married Frankie Bennett. You’re so young, so happy. And it fell apart.”
    “He wanted the star more than the woman. That was a lesson I had to learn. But he gave me Johnnie. My beautiful boy. Johnnie’s gone now. I lost my beautiful boy. It’s been a year, and still I wait for him to come home. Maybe this one will be a boy.”
    She laid a hand on her belly, picked up a short glass, rattled the ice chilling the vodka.
    “You shouldn’t drink while you’re pregnant.”
    Janet jerked a shoulder, sipped. “They didn’t make such a to-do about it when I was. Besides, I’ll be dead soon anyway. What will you do with all those pictures?”
    “I don’t know. I think I’ll pick the ones I like best, have them framed. I want pictures of you in the house. Especially pictures of you at the farm. You were happy here.”
    “Some of my happiest moments, some of my most