Tribute

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