Tribute

God, shut up. You’re asking for them.”
    After two sweaty hours and emptying 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 farmhouse kitchen next. And eyeing 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 marvelous old O’Keefe & Merritt range 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 memory. Janet, a frilly apron over a wasp-waisted dress, sunlight hair pulled back in a sassy tail, stirring something in a big pot on the stove. Smiling at the camera while her two children looked on adoringly.
    Publicity shoot, Cilla remembered. For one of the women’s magazines. Redbook or McCall’s . The old farmhouse stove, with its center grill, had sparkled like new hope. It would again, she vowed. One day, she’d stir a pot on that same stove with probably as much faked competence as her grandmother.
    She started to squat down to check the oven cleaner, then yipped in surprise when she heard her name.
    He stood in the open doorway, with sunlight haloing 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 embarrassment.
    “Dad.”
    When he stepped forward, arms opening for a hug, she tossed up her hands, wheeled back. “No, don’t. I’m absolutely disgusting. Covered with . . . I don’t even want to know.” She swiped the back of her wrist over her forehead, then fumbled off the protective gloves. “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 as most of the initial awkwardness passed. “What are you doing here?”
    “Somebody recognized you in town when you stopped for supplies and said something to Patty. And Patty,” he continued, referring to his wife, “called me. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
    “I was going to. I mean I was going to call you.”At some point. Eventually. When I figured 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 overgrown, weedy lawn and gardens, the trio of misshaped Bradford pears, a wild tangle of what she thought might be wisteria could all be dealt with. Would be. But the wonderful old magnolia rose, dense with its deep, glossy leaves, and stubborn daffodils shoved up through the thorny armor of climbing roses along the stone walls.
    “I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Cilla began 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 him, she thought. Gavin McGowan took things as they came—the good, the bad, the mediocre. How he’d ever fallen for the emotional morass that was her mother eluded her. But that was long ago, Cilla mused, and far away.
    She bit into her portion of the sub. “I’m a bad daughter.”
    “The worst,” he said, and made her laugh.
    “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 the moment. Otherwise, she’s okay. Number Five’s putting together a cabaret act for her.” At her father’s quiet look, Cilla shrugged. “I think when your marriages average a three-year life span, assigning numbers to husbands is practical and efficient. He’s okay. Better than